I'm Outside if You Need Me

Time to get philosophical at a technological university. A first year writes in a melancholy need for something more.

I sit where I was last night,
Or perhaps might have been in some before time.
There is no star to be seen tonight;
Not even the light of Jupiter to the south.
It is the time of endings and beginnings.
Nowhere to go, nothing to say,
Everything to be seen and answered.
The trees can but only whisper;
Vexed, before the leaves fall, die, and are wasted,
Like my breath before me, or a sound, or the day,
Or the last, stolen hours we wish for ourselves,
Or the ancient stones around me we foolishly wish to be eternal.

Author's Note

There is a small spot on the Michigan Tech campus that is a circle of large boulders, all composites and mineral types commonly found in the area and are used for easy access when educating. It is on one of these benches on the lawn I sit next to a bur oak tree, facing Rekhi Hall, on a chilly October evening.