By Julie Allyn Johnson

 

Unruly braids    paisley-green pinafore

all of five years old —

I’m the personification of focus

as Miss Garnett wearing smoke-gray

horn rim glasses,

sunlight bouncing off ice-blue

rhinestones, astonishes me.

 

This is the shape of the letter M.

 

In pink chalk, she draws it out,

phoneticizes its reverberation:  Emmmmmm….

 

She points to its mascots,

impish mice, upper case/lower case

crudely cut from cardstock —

twitchy whiskers, long curly tails —

in line with twenty-five other

sound-pairs in a letter train

circling round & round the classroom.

 

Jiffy-Pop sparks

cram my cranial headspace,

detonations of imparted data,

bursts of eureka: impacts to alter the course

of my history.

 

Twenty-six powerful revelations:

sounds have a name,

a symbol,

an identifier       letters.

 

LETTERS!

 

Letters form words.

Words                   convey ideas.

Ideas translate to images.

 

Images fuel inspiration.

 

Energy, melody, enchantment,

conduits all, to a fluid, amazing

beautiful world.

 

Kindergarten thunderbolt.

And still the mighty skies

rain down lingual magic.