My Poetry – When no one knows

With a new semester starting up I’m finding a recurrence of the common malady for classroom discussion: that of the teacher asking a question that prompts dead silence from the class.  In the spirit of that, I decided to share this poem I wrote.

Photo courtesy of Cory Hahn

When no one knows
by Stephen Recker

Mr. Wells glanced up
and asked a question.
Everything stopped.
I’d been counting the number of times
Chad tapped the desk with his pen:
One hundred seventy-three.
One hundred seventy-four.
My pen dug a deep furrow through my paper
lightly tearing the page.
One hundred ninety-six.
Silence as we waited for an answer.