Mr. McPhee’s Class   Jouncing. Dolosse. Craton. Words you serve like oranges, unpeeling their sounds. We’re not just horsing around in canoes, or hitchhiking newly made reefs, measuring the crust after the quake — we’re holding words to our nostrils, inhaling, truly tasting them, getting them down. Yes, we love this class. Our urgently unhurried task: stratagem and structure, a sense of where we are. You model the hair shirts we’ll wear, naturalized citizens of this country we’ve come into, promising too much, eager but unwise, hardly writers yet and our hearts don’t break even when you tell us: keep squeezing, guys — every good word takes as long as it takes.                                                for John McPhee     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont March 8, 2011