My Unseen

Originally appeared in The Spoon River Quarterly, Spring 1977

I will find you near a schoolroom by the woods

I'll find you peeping through the window at an old blackboard

You will be living in a morning that passed years ago

The desks and chairs will remember with you

Will coax you to that inevitable memory

To the screaming second that must strike

And I'll watch

From the swamp behind you

When the memory's pulse is released

When it hits you like an electrocution

When it jerks you again to the black distance of my unseen

David Thomas Roberts (1976)