The View from Classroom 2210

In the early morning hours,

As dawn’s light twitches past autumn-stained leaves,

Two sparrows alight the branch outside my window.

Momentarily I am torn from my study of algebra,

To watch them dance against the blue sky, 

They twit back and forth.

One calls to the other as they twirl,

Wings open to the sky,

Drinking in the wind.

Oh to be a bird,

To enjoy the chilled air,

And never trouble my mind with arithmetic.

Alas, I must return to the sea of lined paper and graphite,

So pale beneath fluorescent lights,

Surrounded by stale air that doesn’t touch the heart.

I sit longing for the fog of the domain outside the concrete walls,

For the little birds who I watch.

They’ll be gone by the time I’m released.

Smoky Ashes

Smoke-crested is the only phrase to describe it.

Watercolor tinted clouds 

Brought by a blaze

A splintering heat

Leaves a maze of twisted remains

Each stem reduced to dust

Faster than could be stopped

An echoing cruelty

Eerie in its peace

It lies in the nothingness that follows.

A monotonous blue, false in its very nature covers the air.

Limitless above untrained eyes

Blind to the burn that robbed the land below

Slowly it is felt

The heat reaches the hands of its perpetrator 

But there is nothing to be done

And the sky bares down brighter 

Filtered through the soot

The sunset shines like stars 

The new hues are their own flames, branded into the psyche.

Time Heals All

Tomorrows and Yesterdays.

Crash and foam.

Traceless in a moment.

The endless sea of seconds

Only dampens your mind.

Nothing is absorbed.

Nothing stays.

I am gone.