A sweating roomful of students,
faces turned up to catch the last 
encouraging word.  Eager as they
for the hour to end, I lather
my smalltalk till I chirp
with mucus, cough up a word 
or two extra, then expel
the class like a hairball.  Vacant
now, the room sags and the damp
speckles on the wall in glossy blobs.
Outside, a horn honks and honks, 
the driver's public stupidity 
a final retort to the process
of education that exhausts me
year after year, leaving the faintest
phosphorescent residue.  No one 
tells the tale.  No one repeats 
my witty slogans, wisecracks.
None go forth to professions
glib enough to instill respect 
for whoever taught these wonders.
The light of Keene this autumn
looks solemn with prophecies
I'd rather not live to fulfill.
The wooden houses look ashamed
because years ago when I lived here
and walked to work their owners
thought only child molesters walked
so they set the police on me.
The cops thought I looked harmless 
and confessed themselves befuddled
by such obvious crank calls
but felt compelled to respond.
If only my students could share
that simple, useless sense of duty.
I tote my books back to my office
and watch the Beech Hill sunset burn
the last woolen mist and expose
the valley flat as a photograph.
Nothing essential has happened,
nothing to entice Baudelaire
to reincarnate in Keene, his black
ribbon tie askew.  Time to drive 
twenty miles home and bury myself
in Mather's Magnalia, Smollett's 
Peregrine Pickle, Burton's 
Anatomy of Melancholy,
books so explicit no one
but me reads them, every word
a blessed rebuke, every sentence
strung taut enough for a hanging,
each paragraph a Sisyphus stone
I'm eager as ever to roll.