To Mrs. Laurenzie, Whose Red Lipstick Was the Brightest Thing I Saw On the First Day of School in 1998 When I Moved to Haddon Heights, New Jersey

I write out “remembrance” and it looks
like Rembrandt.
I recall in the fourth grade
looking at
a book of
his paintings.
At one in particular,
my art teacher exclaimed “how beautiful!”
Rembrandt had painted light caught
in the slick muddy side of clay on a wheel.
To me at the time
it just looked like a white band
of nothing that had found
its way to a potter’s hands.