semesters

they come and go like waves washing some primordial beach. i am the beach, i suppose, as one semester after another comes crashing over me, i erode, pulverize, move in subtle fashion, but to all appearances, here i am as millions of gallons of water move northward, or downward, and on through the gill rakers of strange fish, over branching gorgonian polyps, through vast tropical adventure. this desk of me has been in this room since some time in the 1980's I think, or earlier, and was placed in this location, in part, because of a dream I had in 2000. it is the still center of a turning world here. few things change, but the steady stratification of grade files, like geological layers, progresses inevitably. buried like trilobite fossils are the grades of my friends who have taken the class and gone on to do other things. Little Hateful, there you are in an odd deposit taught by a visiting professor, My Clone, there you are twice, once as a student, second as a TA, and the rest of you, like paleozoic fish. one more wave crashes, and now is that strange moment where water begins to ebb rather than flow, small crustacea forage.