Lesson-Learning

Many years late,

He stared out the window,

The trees now bare of leaves,

The grass now yellowed with winter’s breath,

The air pungent with mistakes.

He had been a lone pupil,

Feverishly writing down

Her wise pronouncements,

Sacrosanct verbiage believed

As boundless love.

He eventually saw his teacher

As performing a pattern,

Programmed like a novel

In serial form,

The final pages

Presenting lyrical evocations

Of delusion.

Over time,

He found his mind

Detecting in itself

An inability

To eradicate even the most

Trivial detail.

In this obsessive classroom,

Solemnly furnished by his insomnia,

Closure was happening

In this duplicitous teaching journey.

He burst out laughing

“Forgive me,

My laboratory friends,

For dragging your trust

Down this rabbit hole,

Where the final gambit is for me to guess,

That which you might already know.”

More laughter,

As he thought of the homemade

Emotional bomb she had set,

Becoming no match for the armor

Protecting his heart and mind.

He had but one lesson to share,

“Duplicitous teachers of love with agendas,

Oh, so dangerous to unsuspecting students,

Where such a lesson that must be acquired,

But, cannot be taught,

Learns by understanding the answer

As one that can only be realized

Through experience.”