In the seat that we shared in the second grade there was always a space between us left for our guardian angels. We had made it out of the brownies together because you knew your numbers and could find the right pages while I could read all the words. You were absent a lot between Halloween and Thanksgiving and just before Christmas vacation you disappeared along with the tinsel and paper turkeys and never returned. My guardian angel and I had the seat to ourselves for a little while only until I was demoted back to the brownies because I could never find the correct page. You were not my first death but your going was not solaced by the usual rituals of separation the dark lugubrious murmurs and invitations by threat to the dignified grownups' view of a child's inelegant pain so even now all these years of death later I search through the index of each new book on magic hoping to find some new spelling of your name. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS ON TAGORE by MARIANNE MOORE THE FUTURE LIFE by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI: 4. THE MOON'S ORCHESTRA by JOHN GOULD FLETCHER MODERN LOVE: 34 by GEORGE MEREDITH WALT WHITMAN by HARRISON SMITH MORRIS |