For Natasha Trethewey & Tracy K. Smith

These are the women who teach
Poetry today at the places
Where I was once proud to attend,

Women with attractive, tilted
Faces smiling from the backs
Of their Pulitzer-Prize winning

Volumes of acid-free verse,
Replete with the exquisite
Prose-verse encomia of poets

My own and my mother's
Ages who taught me ages ago
Whatever I was wasn't going

Ever to be this appealing,
This winning, this gentle,

Forgiving. Forgive me. I love this.