I was a teacher once.

My students seemed
like glittering
fantastical birds.

The girls flew and flashed
in their keen new beauty,

the boys perched sullenly
and stiff as boys seem
always wont to do.

I was a teacher observing
the flittering
ephemera of youth,

that one thing
we all remember
always

though it only
stays a little

before it is driven
by worry and the world
into memory

and flies away
into forever.