The Corner Room

Let me teach in a room in the corner of the school
Where the race of students go by,
The ones coming in,
The ones going out,
The ones stair-ing up
and down.

I would not sit in the cynic's seat
or hurl the rules at them;

Let me teach in a room in the corner of the school
and be a mentor to them.

I hear from my chair in the corner of the room
the knocks upon my window
of students coming in early
and staff who've forgetten their keys,
and I must get up and go.

For my light is the only one on at 5am
and my class is right next to the door.

Let me teach in a room in the corner of the school
and be a friend to all.

The Clouds Jar Me into Stopping

The clouds jar me
into stopping
to notice how their mottled front
moving across the night sky
looks like the top
of broiled marshmallows
on top of brown sugar
and sweet potatoes
that Mom makes at
Thanksgiving.

I remember
formerly looking
at the clouds
more often,
and I wonder
what's changed
that I don't
anymore.

Parking Lot Gulls

There they were:

gulls on the parking lot.

And I thought, "So, are they called seagulls
just because someone saw them on the sea?"

And then I thought, "duh."
(though that doesn't explain the "gull" part)

And then I thought," Well, then, these are
Parking Lot Gulls,
and they will have a meaning bestowed upon them
as soon as I snap a photo or two
to remind me to write this poem."

Good thing I did, too.

But now to the business of assigning meaning.
I googled "gull"
and wikipedia told me a lot.
which I skimmed and distilled to these factors:

Gulls eat almost anything
and are monogomous.

Let us, then,
be like the gulls

but less screechy.

Yellow Lights on Rainy Days

Perhaps it was because of the paint.

All that thinking about
matching colors
and shades

made me cringe when the light
was red
or even turned green.

But when I saw it switch
to yellow
ahhhh...
all was right with the world,

Like life just shifted
into the right gear.

Not too fast,
not stopped,
but slow.

And all the yellow streetlamps
echoed so.

Dreams or Not at Night

As if 

Until

I'd had one

I wouldn't really

Be human,

And until I hadn't had one at some point,

I wouldn't remain.

I didn't have one last night.

Now I guess I'm covered.

Non-Euclidean Geometry

I love this shirt,
its grid lines in shades of white and light blue
spreading over a dark blue field.

Short sleeves don't usually suit me,
but I'll wear it for this:

It makes me feel like a math teacher,
forever quietly trying to help people understand
non-Euclidean geometry.