I Had A Crunch Poem by Gert Strydom

When I was in standard nine
(now grade eleven)
I had a crunch
on my English teacher.

She was very young
maybe twenty-one,
(must have matriculated at seventeen)
and had a cute
or rather beautiful face,
was slender
with soft dark hair
hanging to her shoulders
and even softer
dark brown eyes.

She never raised her voice
(not even when I and Daan
would cause a small fight
to be sent out to the winter sun)
and in her class
we had a lot of fun.

She read the poem of the highwayman
and at times
I still hear her sweet voice
and the noise
of the hooves coming on.

That year we did
Shakespeare’s Othello
about the brave black general
and his white girlfriend,
was caught in the tragedy of
to Kill a Mockingbird,
read Jonathan Livingston Seagull
and played Neil Diamond in class

and live really was a blast
until she left at year end
to be married.