It Crossed My Mind

     In Elinor Gordon Blair --  my English teacher during my junior and senior years at Indiana Joint High School in Indiana, Pennsylvania -- I found a woman who became a life-long inspiration to me.  An insatiable reader and always curious, Elinor Blair seemed to learn from every thing that came along. Such an excellent strategy  -- and I learned it from her.  
     Mrs Blair -- is my habit to continue to call her by this formal name -- still lives in Indiana and she is 99 years old.  Three years ago she published a poetry collection, It Crossed My Mind.  These following stanzas from Blair's collection use imagery from geometry to describe the destructive way in which "skeletons of steel" have remade our American landscapes. 
     Thank you, Mrs. Blair, for these lines and for the ways you have enriched my life.