Retrospective

Outside, the trees are waiting for the children.
But for now, they sit at their desks,
the field of pencils moving, heads bowed.
A comet passes through the room,
but no one notices.
In a desert somewhere, a little wind kicks up,
And the dust of a poet dances like a dervish.
Twenty-two years ago, in a dream,
An Oriental master poured thousands upon thousands
of diamonds into my cupped hands,
so many they formed a lake at my feet.
It is twenty years now that I have been visiting classrooms—
looking for fingerprints of the divine, unpacking the silence.
The clock clicks. The pencils slow.
Who has a poem? I ask.
Eleven hands go up. Twelve hand... thirteen... fourteen...