No one saw it coming,
The wind gave no hint.
He was almost everywhere,
It was assumed he’ll be around longer.
He was often ignored,
no reason to lavish him with attention.
No immediacy.
Now that the circumstances of his death
rocked the community
everybody feels we should have acknowledged him
the last time he was in our midst.
They found him
inside his room,
shut away from the world,
shut away from our hearts,
three days after his death,
his body decomposing
slacked where the muscles were.
It was so difficult to reconcile
The image of a formidable English teacher
with the sight of a man
reduced into a crumbling piece of earth.
I could not bear
the thought of his gruesome death.
I believed that formidable persons die in grace.
Lifeless but erect;
pale but robust.
Yet, even the unwieldy tree
high above the mountains
succumb to termites
and the endless assaults of nature.
If so, how could man withstand
the blade?
As the last nail was driven into his coffin,
with one final blow of the hammer
his fate was sealed.
I could not think of a meaningful way to repay a teacher
than shed a single drop of tear.
