"Mildred Howarter" by Leslie Mundwiler

Mildred Howarter

by Leslie Mundwiler

Who were the great? Question from the Taoists,

from India's philosophers. Teacher's questions

once upon a time, in fifth grade.

Mildred Howarter small and fragile, poised

as if always on the tips of her toes.

In sober colour--umber or navy--

contrasted with cream-white skin. Light moustache

I never missed staring at, or the gray

wisps in her black hair, pulled back in a bun.

We drove by her house, white shingles and black

shutters, twice a week, never stopped. What would

any parents have said, in defence of

their right to children and ignorance? I thought

she was dying, so often away from

class, a distant nearness when she was there.

What did I want to be? she asked. War planes

and glory, the classroom preparation

for a grand disappearance, shake of blue

cloth, bang and a puff of smoke. Dreaming to

fly I'd fly to dream. A pilot, I said,

the fantasy flat as soon as spoken.

Wealth didn't rate. Or fame. Her voice low

and quiet, we had to listen. Pasteur, she

told us about, Jonas Salk, Walter Reed.

What did we want to be? No one before

had given this such weight. The world in us.

Flying became something miserable

and selfish. I was ashamed to have cared

so little for what I was to become.

My friend Leslie Mundwiler, who died last November, was born the same year as I (1944), but in the United States. Declining the Vietnam War, he came to Canada in the sixties. He told me it was quite a tussle to squeeze everything he wanted into "Miss Howarter." I imagine the fourth stanza says what he wants to say about the patriotism he was leaving behind when he crossed the line. The contempt he has for the magical death buried in his childhood ambition gives me pause though, as does his contempt a stanza earlier for his parents' "right" to generation and ignorance. For Miss Howarter, he doesn't quite have contempt. A mutual friend of ours suggests maybe he would have done better to query her values too, they adding up to just one more alien intrusion. But we are social beings. Where is a ten-year-old to turn? There was a distance to close things in every direction for young Les, unbridgeable.

(The poem is copied from Miss Howarter's Fifth Grade by Leslie Mundwiler, Highbrow Books, 2013. Naturally I'll delete it if asked to do so by the copyright holder.)

Late breaking news—For a year I've thought of "Mildred Howarter" as a thirty line poem, filling one page in the collection, closing a section. Only now do I discover it continues overleaf; there is a second page to it, another thirty-five lines. No, no! I'm not prepared to adjust!