​POETRY 

"who was, not haughty,
but elevated from the common 
run of the mill like us,
and we all sensed it."
​
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Daphne
by Steve Surryhne

​​Who'd ever heard tell
of such a name?
 
This was a little country school
in the Central Valley,
 
farmers' kids and such.
Of course we took to calling her
 
Daffy Duck, which is what
you'd expect from such kids
 
confronted with an exotic name
like Daphne, and a girl
 
who was, not haughty,
but elevated from the common
 
run of the mill like us,
and we all sensed it
 
and quit using Daffy Duck
and quite sensibly surrendered
 
to her superiority which was
hers by rights, we all sensed that.
 
In the Spring, our teacher, Mr. Stroh,
who had been a collegiate gymnast,
 
decided to teach us fifth graders
some tumbling during recess.
 
Amid our stumbling and un-
coordinated flailing about, 
 
on some mats he'd laid out
on the playground,
 
Daphne rose above us all,
as was her way,
 
she was a quick study,
unlike the rest of us clodhoppers,
 
it appeared that this
was what she had been born for.
 
We became her audience,
gawking in our simplicity,
 
Mr. Stroh beaming,
beside himself, at her fluid mastery.
 
She wasn't at our school for long,
leaving before the term ended.
 
None of us knew where she came
from or where she went.
 
Beauty and grace had,
for a brief moment,
 
been with us, had been ours,
then left us with all
 
we would ever know of either.

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​​Steve Surryhne was an Associate Lecturer in English Literature at SFSU from 1993-2012. He is currently semi-retired and has recently returned to writing poetry. A native of San Francisco, he was a baby-beat in the sixties, knew some of the beat poets and is now a neo-beat. In his alternate career, he worked in Community Mental Health in San Francisco from 1979-2012. He took first place in the Jack Kerouac Poetry contest in 2015 and has been published in The Blue Moon Review, Interpretations and San Francisco Magazine. He is currently working on a project with a photographer friend on poem-texts and photos.

Other works in this issue:
Poetry:
​Evergreen Review

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