There is a sense of the color having been drained from the air
in the classroom, after the last lecture.
The emptiness takes on an echoing depth -
like a whale singing a seeking song into the darkness -
the song reaches out and out.
The chairs with their arm desks are the same,
and the lectern has not moved.
The white board needs to be washed down
with its layers of blue and black smudges
like a boxer's face, two days after a fight.
But everything is different
the moment the door closes behind the last student.
You may see them individually
on campus or in town -
a year from now one will write politely, asking for a recommendation.
But the class - this leviathan with which you have wrestled
and tried to tame,
struggled with late at night in the waters of darkness
strategizing the maneuvers for the next day -
this thing you have intermittently loved and been enraged by -
it existed in and in between.
Now it has dissolved into component parts
and drifted away like driftwood in clumps of two or three -
with a friendly wave and a "thank you"
it has ceased to be.
And who are you, standing unopposed,
nothing to challenge
and nothing to confirm?
**
YouTube: https://youtu.be/pbyWL80F9-A
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