Poem: Nearly The End

The Start and Finish Line of the “Inishowen 100” scenic Drive flickr photo by Andrew_D_Hurley shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license

The one-word prompt for this morning’s poetry was “habitat” and immediately, the ideas of my students (whom I love, don’t get me wrong, but I am ready to be done with the year) as ‘invasive species’ in their temporarily adopted habitat of school sprung to mind and the poem unfolded.

Their adopted habitat
becomes their hallways
and classrooms,
lockers and lunchrooms,
playgrounds and fields

Wandering in search
of connection and friendship,
ideas and mischief,
and always, permission
to be who it is they are
becoming –

Invasive species, they are,
but always welcomed
as curiosities from the start,
taking seed like vines
inside the labyrinth
of our hearts,

only to arrive at the day
when they become un/uprooted
from the grounds
on which they have covered,
and then gone, disappeared –

Approaching summer
seems, then, like fallow fields,
but soon enough, another
crop of adolescent interlopers
suddenly, like clockwork,
reappears

Peace (and Endings),
Kevin