My English Teacher

I fell in love with my English teacher
For reasons intellectual and aesthetic
She was a lodestone of learning
And also of love
She was, in fact, magnetic

She introduced herself to one and all
“Miss Swan,” I echoed softly
She was a goddess, well, like a goddess
I loved her instantly and awfully

She had a look, a manner, a way
There were many great qualities about her
She said, Make friends with grammar today
Not for a moment did I doubt her

Her vowels drove me crazy
Of each sentence, she was the subject
And after that first day
Her definition was my ubject

Her consonants were endearing
And her syllables most alluring
And when she alluded to her participles
It was torture worth enduring

She was a walking dictionary
With a little slang thrown in
Each day eager, with pencil sharpened
I’d wait for class to begin

Her nouns were always proper
Her tense was unconditional
But when she got excited
She was certainly untraditional

Conjunctions were all I thought about
Both in and out of class
To study, together, our great language
Was a pleasure unsurpassed

Her adjectives were so affecting
That I felt like rushing to her
To declare my love, then and there
And, with verbs transitive, try to woo her

I memorized each complex phrase
And pondered about gender
I wrote a thousand poems of love
I was too shy to send her

Her articles drove me wild
As did her tone (so parenthetical)
Her pronouns were so personal
But our positions antithetical

Our stars were crossed
Our fates confused
Our classroom time
So much misused
I loved her singular
I loved her plural
Indented, in brackets
As woman, as girl
As teacher, as guide
As exclamation
As simile, as metaphor
As inspiration

The parallel construction of our love
That I hoped would now surround me
Turned out to be just single-spaced
For she never thought about me

I could fashion a paragraph with the best
But my love remained unrequited
For only in my imagination
Were we to be united

What sort of life could we make together
Simply, one so sadly imprudent
Equals we could never be
For she, the teacher
And I, the student