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