Classroom
School's out for Spring
The long cool days
Gentle breezes on your face
While the students loiter
By their muscle cars
Smoking cigarettes and drinking
Wine from a paper bag
Along the track where they
Used to take their pictures
The future is so far away from here
This small town
Doesn't even know what's
About to happen in this
Indian Summer without
Consequence or decision
There are some girls off
To the side under the willow
But no one notices them
They don't notice anybody
But there's a gaze from
The classroom window above
The lab mice someone forgot
To dissect remain without
A Lab Coat overseer to
Coordinate their experiments
One with huge pink eyes
Manages to wriggle from
The bars and runs around
The classroom floor expecting
To find some crumbs
But all there is to find is
Outside on the grass with the
Girls who wear their sunglasses
In the shade and tank tops in
This year's bright Spring fashion
Talk of parties and guys and
The new car Jasmine's father
Bought her while Rachel is
Thinking about a Dairy Queen
Sundae she wouldn't even
Think to be wondering what's
Going on in that classroom
On that classroom floor where
Big pink-eyed mouse is brooding
And plotting against Lab Coat
And this cursed abandonment
While the rest of the world
Lounge in their freedom
He has escaped the bars but
Is still in chains of animal
Instinct and a walleyed ground
Level point of view
It is better he can't see out the
Window where all the students
Forgot about this classroom
As they sit in the grass, grass
He could be in now, grass he
Could use to hide from birds
And snakes that try to eat him
He doesn't feel safe in this
Sterilized environment sealed in
From the danger lurking in
The freedom which lies just
Outside this classroom door
He sniffs the freshly mopped
Tile floor as the antiseptic burns
His mouse-sized sinuses and makes
His whiskers curl and stand out
Straight with a "Boing!"
And irritate his naked mouse feet
Unlike any wood shavings
Ever had before yet he does not
Miss the earthy dirt that soils
The students hands and blue
Jeans because he does not know
That it is there in the first place
Which, for the kids outside, is
A good thing as they continue
Goofing off totally oblivious to
The mouse, to the classroom, to
What's about to happen in
This little suburb but when
Spring is gone and Summer
Finally rolls around and the
Mouse has begun experiments
Of his own they will wish they had
Gone into that classroom
That afternoon and killed that mouse.
Copyright © Paul Maggi 2003
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