Schoolgirls in black skirts
and white blouses water flowers
that bloom only in the night.

One of the girls wears a laurel
crown, another has a thin scar
down her leg and around her ankle.

The teacher, at the far corner
of the field, sands the ancient
clapper which will call them in.

The fence around the field
and schoolhouse is electrified,
but that doesn’t keep boyfriends

from trying to climb it.
Their bodies, strewn all over
the mesh, waste away much

too slowly. The janitor works
overtime to scrape them off,
but he can’t keep up. The girls are

studying biology, will get to stay
up late to watch the flowering.
When the clapper goes off, they line

double-file in order of height, march
out of recess to classical strains.
The fence fills up again.

–James Doyle,
The Long View Just Keeps Treading Water (2012)
Accents Publishing

James Doyle is retired, 75 years old, and lives in Ft. Collins, Colorado. His publications include The Governor’s Office, The Sixth Day; The Silk at Her Throat, Einstein Considers a Sand Dune, and Bending Under the Yellow Police Tapes. James Doyle’s poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including Atlanta Review, Cimarron Review, The Iowa Review, The Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, and others. His poetry has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s PBS radio show, The Writer’s Almanac, and on Poetry Daily. Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry has featured his work, and his poetry has appeared over a dozen times on Verse Daily. His poems have been reprinted in many anthologies, including Prentice Hall’sLiterature: an Introduction to Critical Reading, used in universities across the country.