school DAZE

In the spring, in those first creeping days it is always March that unravels. The tangle of winds (cool and warm, still cooler and cooler still)  in their confusion buffet us impatiently from home to school, and perhaps back again, perhaps...  But "home," has already become a far place.  It will forever be that impossible idea that we each in turn will struggle to resuscitate, anxiously smoking cigarettes with the onlookers while we wait for our turn.  But that is later, much later.  A long time ago...

Now.

Our coats are obstinate sails that threaten to carry us anywhere but back, back to each idea, each sacred private image each personal assemblage of "home," the street that we play on, the nearest church or burger joint, the "father," the "mother," the child that we imagine ourselves to be.  In dreams, our heads are almost severed by scandal or revolution rolling, rolling, then hovering for that elongated minute a half inch above the desk's laminated pine.  My unnaturally large forehead is falling forw...

Before the crack, before the bob--head down, body up--the nervous bell unleashes its jangling laughter.  It marks the end of the day.

Next morning, our green and yellow windbreakers are the only sign of vegetation.  The matted hair of winter, the jaundiced lawn, is watched over by the skeletons:  chestnuts that contain no fortune cookie promise along side of wizened oak and sickly elm.  My sister's blue poncho is our only memory we have of the sky.