Thursday, December 10, 2015

UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOL BY THE SEA

Quiet, stillness. Oh, Christ—now what

is this? A slight ticking sound,

subtle but distinctly springing
up from within this penitent little

Sunday School student—my soul! Could it
be the strangely unmusical toll

of plain truth knocking? Now—
in that eternal second between the last and

each next second, when the very unrelaxed hands
of a piebald old wall clock

seem to have become nothing less
once again than twin-imperatives,

each stiffly pointing
two very different ways to go, one long

and one short, although with strangely the same
plainness of urgency and arrowheaded emphasis—

it is obvious, for once. I have no choice
but to very soon grow

somehow—more timeless. Less bound to this
place. And as confident

as the motley ribald ocean
presently filling up each classroom window

in his own—unrepentant

wishy-washiness.