MidTerm Break

Mid-Term Break I sat all morning in the college sick bay Counting bells knelling classes to a close. At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home. In the porch I met my father crying- 5 He had always taken funerals in his stride- And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow. The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram When I came in, and I was embarrassed By old men standing up to …

…the difference being his paler complexion and 'poppy bruise'. The final line stands out on its own. Almost every word is emphasised so that the reader must take in the line's message and the shock and deep grief that the family must have felt. There is an element of shock for the reader reading it for the first time also, when they discover who has died and that he was a mere four years old.