Swizzle Stick

Mud Larking

I’m an English teacher
with a feather & a thick
skin. It’s a mud lark, sifting
through clump of verbiage
for jewels, odd gems,
those Thames
garnets of phrasing
with flashes of clarity
even brilliance

but the work is hard
& some of the mud
sticks to me
as I grade paper after
paper. When I enter
the final marks
there’s a glow
warm & glad
I can throw down
my feather, stretch,
shake off that mud
in a glow of tired relief