Gladys (Poetry)

She had to set a good example to her girls
she’d find the strength — she couldn’t let them see
that all the values she’d so long upheld
now counted for so little — had no worth
in this uncouth, post-war democracy.

The letter on her desk looked almost ordinary —
so like the others, addressed to her alone
the bad news carried in it blunt as stone
heavy and impersonal — the facts
small casualties of a new progressive world.

She kept her course as disbelief swept through
like a hurricane that stripped her masthead bare —
sails torn away, the rigging lost — but duty found
a star to follow, salvaging the good
and drawing comfort from the dying day.

There was no staying on, no clinging tight —
tradition and its trappings were no more
than history — quaint footnotes to the past —
and she’d become a curiosity herself
so suddenly she couldn’t catch her breath.

With dignity she told her dumbstruck girls
the school would close — the land and buildings sold
for housing — and maintained that final year
a pride in everything they’d understood
was precious — the sense each one belonged.

That last assembly poignant as a voyage —
the school song thundering right to the end —
the echo lodged in all six hundred minds
as Gladys, like a figurehead, leaned out
across a living sea of navy blue.

She vanished in retirement, crossed the line
into the twilight realms where teachers go
but didn’t drift — a cutting let us know —
she set a good example to her girls —
with dignity her ailing ship went down.