Recognition

At the start of each semester
my classroom would fill with
faces full of suspicion, anticipation
and the old favourite, boredom;
but I would be going through the old
game of seeing dopplegangers—
shades from the past, who,
separated from their alter egos
by space and time could not
be siblings or children of the others,
yet stirred in me some primal
sense they were related.

Same eyes, manner, posture, sensibility
as the others. I had to make the effort
to separate this one from the other.
Parallel universe, DNA pushing at the
boundaries of quantum sense: another
mystery to contemplate while
unraveling the class rules of conduct,
plan for the future, evaluation,
the mysteries of judgement, composition,
language, human impetus, motivation,
while prodding for sensitive perceptions
of human joy and suffering among
children too young or too sadly wise
to learn from this.

And this fascination was mine;
it enlivened me, brought me into comfort
with my world: familiar, stable,
like greeting old, long-disappeared friends
on another continent,
in an little unexpected bazaar,
over rich coffee on a checked tablecloth.

And so our lives touched
and so they evolved or took all for granted—
so moved to fascination; so bored every day.