The new Thomas Aquinas

I sit in a makeshift 'portable' classroom and can see the new school building, literally just meters away, rise into view: ochre beams and girders, cinder blocks, welders' sparks, forklifts and other construction paraphernalia all around me.

When there's a quiet moment, I imagine a view from my new classroom window this time next year

...

From where I sit, it starts to look like a

chancy

maldadjusted

shell of mortar & scaffolding

( minus the eggs )

When done it'd be a deep mountainside gorge

to peep down,

with a view of sublime road

and, at best, a nearby lake, over the firs,

aestheticized in

the light,

a watery dish

where stones & thistles

remain strictly uncontrollable to this day

And are those rollers I'd also see turning into

cryptic mud

(made of the water's same sousy head!),

more rattle than song to me

or some spume or spray or

—because I can't see it per se—

perhaps a crashing macky that's reluctant to lie

on its side, open-

gilled, and die?

And to look at the crows rising up up, sun-mad,

or tearing raucously down,

or quietly grouping,

you'd think they'd seen it all before

and lived off the same shells, bones

A curse to be something this new, prestressed,

the sun its element,

a view of cold star at best