the Elements

I walk past those two rooms everyday
The art department
First the gallery
Empty but for pale scribbles framed
Under lights
Then the office hall
Where teachers sport
Everyday sweaters
The kind my dad might wear
Then the rooms
One, two
They smell exactly the same
As one another
And exactly the same
As one other
That old room I
Used to stay awhile in
The art room
It’s concrete
Maybe that’s the elemental smell
But I know there are horsehair brushes
And thick paints
Sleeping under the walls and
Wooden easels
Skeletons
Twenty tripod skeletons
Empty now but
for stains
ghosts of tour de force
shavings of divine interinvention
The rooms emit coldness
Their doorways physically coagulate
My goose bumps
As I pass
Same with that old room
Except I waited out the cold
Forgetting my skin so tight
As I sat for two hours
A day
As I sat contorted into position
Stiff as a new branch strains
Against the sky
I smell I feel the elements
I was so familiar with
Brought up in
Raised under
Concrete
Brushes
Paint
The cold
The sky
By those two rooms
The art department
My bark quivers against
The warmth coursing underneath
Quivers at the elements
Still driving me

March 21, 2006