Graduation time makes me feel prophetically nostalgic.

Just went to a graduate party last night in Saudi Arabia and saw my seniors dressed to the nines doing imitations of their teachers, looking innocently excited/scared at the future; and I saw glimpses of the men and women they would become.

Today I received an email about the long-anticipated debut novel of a former student and flashbacked to those wonderful evenings spent grading (read: treasuring) her nascent talent.

It seems none of them arrive at the place they started heading for, but I love it when my English-teacher-sense tingles and life makes sense.

I click the microphone so the umpteenth student can once again tell the world the essence of Margaret Atwood’s “Spelling” for her taped IB Oral Commentary.

I want to listen, but it seems so unfocused compared to the poet’s own words which are so precise and ordered.  I must pay attention.  She is trying so valiantly.

I am distracted by a finch outside the window that darts in and out of my line of vision trying to land in some unseen nest hidden under the eaves.  I want to help it, but I don’t have wings.

This, too, is a metaphor.