Back to School...well, almost!

 Orientation...One Last Time!
(Note: This blog, written last May, was saved to draft until recently, when I came across it and decided to put it out there for view.)

People wondered
why
I came...

A last chance
to psyche
up a new crowd--
maybe.

Anxiously curious,
they
meandered
in, clustered in twos
and threes,

eyeing us--
while we were
eyeing them.

Incoming spectators--
longing
to hear
the just right words,
to set their
minds at ease.

Setting the stage
for next year's brave
bunch,
it's here that it all begins
to unfold.

But, this year--
my last year,
I will not watch
that story.

It will unfold,
as it always does
and soon a new crop
will fill the halls
come fall.

Anxious parents
will melt away,
and business
will go on,
as usual.

But when that long
yellow ribbon
of roaring buses
stretches as far as the eye
can see--

And I will
travel toward
a new horizon,
longing...all the while
to be that kid,
who became
the teacher
who streamed down
that hall, and
waited with delight
for a whole new
chapter to begin.