Colony Collapse Disorder, and: Alice, Bewildered, and: The Shadow Teacher

Colony Collapse Disorder

    (Iliad, 2.87-2.90)

Just as a swarm pours from a hollow rockIn one long beeline for the wild thyme,Alighting in clusters on this purple and that,But is stricken with a mass amnesiaThat disorients the compass of the sun,And they forget the steps to traditional dances,And each helicopters into a different dimnessTaking their saddlebags of sweetness with them,And the hive goes dark, the queen is left to starve,And the drones humbug the whimper of the world,And the palace falls to ruins, broken intoBy vandals who would loot the golden storesLeft in the brittle wax hexameters,Just so …

Alice, Bewildered

Deep in the wood where things escape their names,Her childish arm draped round the fawn’s soft neck(Her diffidence, its skittishness in check,Merged in the anonymity that tames),She knits her brow, but nothing now reclaimsThe syllables that meant herself. Ah well,She need not answer to the grown-up beckAnd call, the rote-learned lessons, scolds and blamesOf girlhood, sentences to parse and gloss;She’s un-twinned from the likeness in the glass.Yet in the dark ellipsis she can tell,She’s certain, that her name begins with “L”—Liza, Lacie? Alias, alas,A lass alike alone and at a loss.

The Shadow Teacher

I teach them to behave just like the rest.They’re marked as absences, take up no room.They only raise their hands when others do.They never speak, even when spoken to.

At noon, they always win at hide-and-seek;They love follow-the-leader. Never picked,Not even last, on either side for ball,They never cry, however much they fall.

The buddy system works, and so I pairThem with a partner who’s a solid match.Although they’re clingy, they are quick to learnSingle file, and share, and wait your turn.

They do not count. They only know subtraction;Their hands glide noiselessly across the page,Lefties mostly, erasing as they go.Downcast, as school lets out, they stretch and grow.