The Country of the Young.

The Country of the Young

   This morning I sit at my desk
   and watch students grieving
   on the couch. Tears, quiet talk,
   and one girl shaking. She is

   half embarrassed at her lack
   of composure, perhaps because
   the friend who died in the crash
   the night before can't sit with them,

   nor share the hollow shake of loss.
   Her actions are left in a shell
   empty of sorrow, the minutes
   of her death, mute and eternal.

   I go to them, an apostle,
   a servant of sorrow, and touch
   each on the shoulder, hug the girl
   so bent with pain. I say nothing,

   remembering Romeo
   and Juliet is about the
   separate country of the young.
   I leave them to youthful whispers,

   a language I no longer speak.
   I think hard for the father
   who, in darkness, went searching
   for his daughter and happened
   on the wreck.