217/365 Garrison

Legs like
pencils ending
in erasers:
do you
know your
red shoes
punctuate skinny
limbs so?

Once I
saw your
toenails, yellow
as horn.

Sartorial
camouflage: a
jacket hanging
like a curtain,
rectangular,
button up where
a diaphram
hides, filled with the
baritone, or
bass, of a hymn-
rich harmony.

216/365 Bonnie&Jamie

Mother-son household with
dogs, shaggy children
wide as hassocks, low
and well loved.

Do you realize how your voices
carry over chain-link fencing,
laughing and swearing
through screen doors
during TV sports?

Worlds away from my own yet
we share St. Paul dirt,
an asphalt alley,
dandelion
thistles.

215/365 Claudia R

Tanned as cinnamon, wrinkled
like bark, you would
sun in the lawn
chair you probably called
"chaise": black one-piece deeply
v-necked and yet modest.

Mother who never seemed
busy as my own,
house as pin-perfect as
an elementary school classroom.

After three sons, an
adopted daughter: her story?

214/365 Nel

Is joy crazy?
Hard to know
what's illness, what's
acceptance -- of life
led at fingertips,
barely hanging on
to things not
understood, not trusted.

Changed your name
to something closer
to father's. Made
a life like
a whole person.
Loved a woman
whose identity complements
yours: familial, connected,
redeemed.

213/365 Andrew

Long-haired, long-suffering:
department is lucky you're

chair at the moment,
you work long office hours,

schedule cantankerous and lazy
colleagues during late nights

like mine, clicking, scribbling
student comments in an

office full of work
files, mounted fish, pictures

drawn by your kids, books,
ahead of us all.

212/365 Paula B

Roommate for a semester, from Ohio,
your parents' street still inked
into my blue-bound address book.

Puffy-pink face, freckles, a ready
laugh in licorice-coin eyes: willing
to skip class for any party.

But it's your hair: black curls split
by white part, combed flat, close over
ears like flaps.

211/365 Bob G

Forgot you hired me last millennium,
tilted chair-back with papers in your lap.
Co-interviewer didn't last long as colleague:
your college roommate needed work.

You ignore most people: an arrogance,
white chicken-hair feathering up from a
squint-eyed beak, eyebrowless smile ever
-descending, as you contemplate your current wife.

210/365 Caio

The Illustrated Man
has nothing on you:
stories and history
all over your body: chest
the evidence of familial
love, arms "good" and
"bad" with star elbows.

Bella's dad, Izzi's dad,
proud it appears of
offspring: her mother,
too, I hope: we're
all needing, wanting
to love you, too.

209/365 Aunt Jean

My dad's godmother, Gram's
younger sister, favoring father
rather than mother, conversation
familiar as any I had with your
other sister, Doris: both old St.
Paul syntax and sentiments, rhythms
removed from Gram's speech.
Widowed now almost two years,
deep quiet despite daily daughter
talks and some son visits.

208/365 Sanja

Wild red hair fans
around your face
a dandelion
or ball of yarn,

frames your petite
features and rice
paper skin, pulled
drum-taut over

porcelain cheek bones,
flaming black eyes
crinkling at their
up-turned corners.

In Croatia
you met, married
American
in five days: now
you're four years here.

207/365 Mark S

Swimming together
in a Georgian lake
picnicking with
your Tblisi colleagues

we gossiped about them,
wondering about
their gossip about
us: two mid-westerners

apparently unpartnered,
single, apparently
friendly and
interested/interesting.

Features of interest:
black-cap hair
close-cropped beard
boyfriend Art

heavy-lidded blue eyes
pale-pale skin
adoption:
Iowa an accident.

206/365 Lynda

White hair like
Snow White or
Cinderella:
a face so
unlined it
looks like
a doll's, a
visage hiding
a razor-whip-sharp
mind, eclectic and
rangy as the English
major you are: idea
generator, innovations
recommender, education
proponent and cog, a
generous intensity
ignites bright
light and
warmth.

205/365 Mary Ellen

Bird-thin, beaky
mother to "the
most beautiful
baby in the world" --
he's now twenty, his brother
a twenty-four-year-old
Botticelli barista.

Consummate counselor,
compassionate advocate for
underserved students --
understanding saga-full
stories of lives lived
as complexly as yours.

Spiritual feminist,
completely Quaker --
teaching with every
jangle-earringed
query, every
hump-shouldered nod.

204/365 Peter

Rumpled from toe to temples, embodying the
absentminded professor: smeary glasses slipping down,
fingers plumply interlaced, hair stuck crooked from
hat taken off quickly while greeting a friend.

Philosopher teddy bear, center of a people-web
"someone you should know"
producer/creator/progenitor of The Bat of Minerva,
late-night cable-access philosophy show.

203/365 Jeremy

Showed up in my class
second week, I whispered
at break that you'd
need to drop:
missed first week.

I thought twice, three times,
about my decision, the usual consequence:
commitment, responsibility,
the whole "community of
learners" thing: persistent
low-grade worry.

Shot yourself this morning.

I feel responsible.

202/365 Tarrah

Tall
enough for basketball,
beautiful enough for modeling,
mother-of-one, soon-to-be wife of
another: "reading journal" says your life's
changed
because you've taken two community college
courses: about the environment and about
queer folks. Exactly what we
liberal-arts types hope,
transformation of good
people into even
better people:
you.

201/365 Jill C

Becoming seasoned one semester at a time,
you're ready to contribute to department
policy discussions, procedures, health.

Revising pedagogical commitments and practices,
you're willing to tweak assignments so that
students learn and perform without faking it.

Smiling readily with freckled generosity,
you're reminding us to be our best selves.

200/365 John O

Teaching from the top, not
everyone appreciates quick-silver
attention-span, interested
in anything for a minute-and-a-half,
committed to everything
else for a lifetime.

An Irish Obama, easily living in
the 21st-century: linked-in, wired-up:
prematurely stone-gray hair,
skillfully-tailored suits
opening doors to men-and-women
to impress and influence: for real.

199/365 Jill S

Weekly tutoring, dedicated student
earning BA from a chair, voice forced out
through tightly-lidded box, head-
and-forearms swinging without
rhythm, framed eyes occasionally
landing on Zoe's
curious face.

Never figured out if
you could read,
exactly, or just recognize
individual words. Did
meaning happen in that
clear-threaded-tangle
of your mind?

198/365 Lawrence

Once we shared a
student: cerebral palsy trapped
her gloss on Shakespeare,
yet papers needs must

be written for your
course. Interpretations of poems,
too, and you, never
eye-smiling, acknowledged her unexplored

range of response. Admirable:
especially for a PhD
with a complex, lack
of congeniality: smooth-pated: tweed-jacketed:

serious.

197/365 Nancy J

"Team taught" we called the course, but you
were the expert: came to higher education via

banking, knowledge-rich with experience and energy. Management, of
course, and information systems, these you applied and

conveyed, insisting on clear writing and thinking, two
skills you possess: regular breakfast dates confirm them.

196/365 Nancy W

Orange-haired, freckled, my sister's best friend, thinnest
nose ever: long-faced like both folks, smile pursing up cheeks.

Mother of many boys, once lived over a
funeral home, husband apprenticed there.

Long-landed in Ada, wife of the town mortician
ministering to folks as far as Fertile: as you are.

195/365 Bill H

Perpetually bemused:
dark lashes
camouflage perhaps-blue
irises, perfectly
beautiful son
of perfectly
beautiful parents.

Strange NYC
weekend: "stewardess
friends'" apartment
my first
encounter with
cockroaches on
toothbrushes: You,
gentleman?, slept
on couch.

Walking Central
Park after
dark, me
brashly confident,
you striding
briskly to
"get us out of here."

194/365 Fred

Wide-browed, wide-mouthed, wide-brained
scholar, orderer of Chinese food: family

style the modus operandi, free-wheeled sharing
of stories: blind date the same valence as

latest scholarship on human factors and
IT, PowerPoint and Lessig's brilliance:

it is. Your confidence and humor
give me hope: I can find my tribe.

193/365 Laura G

Ambitious since St. Rose,
your vita plumps
up as your staff
does your bidding: building
something new-old
out of something old-new,
a beautiful institutional
strategic presence.

Formidable, sure, but
shrinking into
shoulder pads, neck
wrinkling skyward
like a turtle, not
retreating but bearing-up-under
the weight of
the department.