After Emily Dickinson
Traffic disperses a dusting of Snow
as Students just awoken
trickle in for Coffee now,
necks in red scarves bound.
The Books from their rucksacks spread
out on varnished tables,
they dive into a Pool of Words
as deep as they are able.
Copyright 2017
T. Allen Culpepper
My hand, stiffer and scalier than on earlier expeditions,
reaches into the cavernous interior of my book bag
like an old snake, bound up in its own tired skin,
slinking through a hole into its den underground,
but finding it in disarray, as if disturbed by intruders,
bent on deceit rather than theft, who left the furnishings
behind, taking away only the comfort of familiarity,
of the sure knowledge of where things lie and who
placed them there, slithering serpentine among
the colored folders meant to keep the papers organized,
searching them for—what was it, the syllabus, an graded
essay for a student previously absent, one of my many
misplaced lists and books, papers and pens and markers?
My looking is taking too long; some eyes are looking up
from phones, someone has asked a question that I
haven’t quite grasped. My mind has wandered to that time
in fourth grade when I worked so far ahead but then
couldn’t find my assignments and had what I know now
was one of my earliest panic attacks, but back here
in today’s class, students are offering excuses, asking for
favors, reporting problems, and, my brain nearly
exploding on its re-entry into present time, which is now
future time because it kept going while my mind
bogged down in the mud of distant memory and lost
its focus on the short-term—short-term, school term,
syllabus, calendar, what was the question? The snake
bares its fangs but loses focus on its strike so that the prey escapes,
and I withdraw my hand from the bag, empty, still needy,
and as the hungry unfed snake crawls back into the light
to warm its chilly blood, I rest my arm on the podium
and gaze out into the eyes of my students and wonder
what they have remembered, what they have forgotten,
what dreams they have tried to prey on and seen escape,
what uneasiness they feel crawling out of their comfort
zones, if their thoughts, like mine, wander and rebel,
mutiny against them like drunken sailors aroused against
an incompetent captain too weak to maintain order.
Copyright 2016
T. Allen Culpepper
Doing homework at the coffeehouse.
tall but stocky, dark blond hair,
in grey hoodie and navy tennis shorts,
bare legs, hairy-blond, no shoes;
well-built, sturdy legs, masculine feet.
Open textbook, pen and pad on table,
fiddling with his tablet underneath.
Looks a little tired, a little bored,
but getting on with it, doing the work.
Reminds me of the kid in Florida
who rode his bike twenty miles to school,
always barefoot, wrote to the president
to protest the college policy requiring shoes—
except that he was thin and slight,
delicate of voice, whereas when this one
speaks his voice is husky, a little hard
to understand because of vague enunciation.
And he slips into flip-flops to exit—
which is cheating, surely.
Copyright 2013
T. Allen Culpepper
