Second grade. I follow the exercises in the book. Up and down, up and down, up and down. Then the next set: round and round and round again, left to right on the lines across the page. All to accomplish handwriting the alphabet in script.
first penmanship …
watching outside our window
a cardinal
My best man called my handwriting sanskrit. My mother said I had “doctor’s script.” She wondered whether she’d forced me to write with my right hand, a commonplace practice in her youth. It’s a possibility; I’m quasi-ambidextrous. And my left-handed script is almost legible.
Blue jay scolding
handwritten journals piled
on my desk
Times change. Our school district chose to drop penmanship from the elementary school curriculum. Technology made handwriting “obsolete.” Mira and I tried to teach Frankie on our own, when he was younger. I even bought him a penmanship series similar to mine from second grade.
But to this day, he does not know how to write in script.
windchimes
the last geese
take flight
for dVerse Poets Haibun Monday–Handwriting and Real Toads Tuesday Platform–National Handwriting Day
Frank J. Tassone 
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