In these last few minutes,
seconds seem like hours.
Anything could happen,
anything at all.
The question,
however,
is not what will happen,
but whether anything will happen at all.
Looking around,
I see faces wrought in thought,
trying to get the right words.
I see blank faces concentrating
on nothing.
Clicking pens, crinkling paper.
Folded arms, hunched shoulders.
Nothing has happened yet,
and I doubt anything will.
The tick tock of the clock,
the mashing of calculator buttons.
Faces down on the table,
eyes on the floor.
The end is near.
See it in the air.
Hear it in the silence.
Boxes here, boxes there.
Full of books, full of nothing.
Shuffling of papers,
another is done.
Restlessness becomes our friend,
our mother, our father,
easy and cool.
We are one
in thinking we are done.
We are one
in hoping we can go.
All at once, you can hear,
the restlessness of each and every,
of all at once.
It comes quickly,
it comes suddenly.
Just before it is time to go,
that's when it happens.
All at once.
This was written while waiting for my Honors English 11 class to finish up their final exam. |
