Junior Words, 73

A High School Teacher’s Final List

List #15: (e) baleful, (f) rectitude

The creature’s fierce and baleful looks

Sent people running everywhere.

All rectitude? A thing in books.

They trampled friends who knelt in prayer.

And so it goes when terror comes:

We kneel—or panic—and behave

As any creature that succumbs

To fear. So few of us are brave.