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
