Letter of Recommendation

Miss A, who graduated six years back,

has air-expressed me an imposing stack

of forms in furtherance of her heart's desire:

a Ph.D. Not wishing to deny her,

I dredge around for something laudatory

to say that won't be simply a tall story;

in fact, I search for memories of her,

and draw a blank—or say, at best a blur.

Was hers the class in that ungodly room

whose creaking door slammed with a sonic boom,

whose radiators twangled for the first

ten minutes, and then hissed, and (this was worst)

subsided with a long, regretful sigh?

Yes, there, as every Wednesday we would try

to overlook cacophony and bring

our wits to bear on some distinguished thing

some poet sometime wrote, Miss A would sit

calm in a middle row and ponder it.

Blonde, I believe, and quiet (so many are).

A dutiful note-taker. Not a star.

Roundheads and Cavaliers received their due

notice from her before the term was through.

She wrote a paper on . . . could it have been

"Milton's Idea of Original Sin"?

Or was it "Deathbed Imagery in Donne"?

Whichever, it was likely not much fun

for her. It wasn't bad, though I've seen better.

But I can hardly say that in a letter

like this one, now refusing to take shape

even as wispy memories escape

the reach of certitude. Try as I may,

I cannot render palpable Miss A,

who, with five hundred classmates, left few traces

when she decamped. Those mortarboard-crowned faces,

multitudes, beaming, ardent to improve

a world advancing dumbly in its groove,

crossing the stage that day—to be consigned

to a cold-storage portion of the mind . . .

What could be sadder? (She remembered me.)

The transcript says I gave Miss A a B.