Poem at the End of the School Year by Carrie Fountain

By Carrie Fountain

I don’t want to teach anymore lessons to anyone, lessons I haven’t
learned or lessons I have learned. I want to keep my lessons inside me.
I want to rise early and take my lessons for a walk in the brisk morning air
in a different state. I want to show them the mountains of my youth,
to be turned off by them at first but then marry them a few years later
in a simple ceremony surrounded by friends and family. Need this? I keep
writing in the margin of your poem. More? I keep asking your essay
about pollution, as if More? is a question your essay about pollution
can answer. Where the hell do I get off, anyway? Always with the better
idea, the advice, the pointing across a room to whatever it is I think
you need to be looking at.