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poetry/o/october-7-2018.txt

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+october 7, 2018
+2018-10-07
+
+***
+
+I woke up early this morning
+and there was nobody alive.
+The entire campus dead,
+little more than the ghostly shell of a bee hive.
+
+I walked to the cafe (and back,
+for they weren't open yet.)
+Half an hour to kill,
+and not a single soul I met.
+
+Solitude sudden and bizarre,
+like a movie about an apocalypse.
+Sky bleak and dismal:
+my future: a possible glimpse.
+
+As the day went on, more and more people came into view.
+Just sleeping, hearts brand new.
+
+After lunch, I decided to get lost.
+Not in the police-get-involved sense, which I'd dreamed about the night
+prior,
+but a simple walk to the arboretum,
+searching for a sense of a higher power.
+
+Throughout my life, I've been in several almost-cults.
+To reality, each a grave insult.
+
+I found a nice bench to sit on, far from the beaten path.
+I wrote for a while, but then several students walked by, gossiping
+about other students being whores.
+I got pissed- not outwardly, of course- and took a wrong turn-
+and then suddenly thought, "I don't think I'm on campus anymore."
+
+Sprawling fields of what once was prairie,
+long grass stretching as far as the eye could see.
+On the other side, a few scattered buildings,
+each one calling out to me.
+
+The same spirit as the one from the old trainyard
+when I was but six years old,
+pleading with me to abandon my father
+and get lost forevermore.
+
+I turned and left and found another bench,
+this one covered with moss.
+I took my laptop back out and continued to write
+and thought about last week's loss.
+
+The definition of catastrophe,
+a great deal of people I thought were friends leaving me,
+and a sudden unwanted sense of what it meant to be a refugee.
+
+The group of people came back my way again,
+so I abandoned my bench and took back to the path.
+Ten minutes of walking later, and I re-found
+the old tree swing, upon which I sat.
+
+It was the swing from new student orientation,
+where I swung from tulip-planting to midday,
+when the student leaders found me and walked me around the campus
+and then sent me on my way.
+
+A wind picked up, and I zipped my coat shut.
+A biker zoomed by, and almost fell in a rut.
+
+I write this poem for the simplest of lives,
+for the people alienated from the land.
+That I soon remember fully what it means to be me,
+and that I soon find a helping hand.
+
+But, like so many dandelion seeds,
+I now scatter to the wind.
+You may take my name and my life,
+but my legacy, I will not rescind.
+
+***
+
+CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander