You Were Once A Girl Poem by RIC BASTASA

i remember you: once a girl whose hands
hold on to mine in school,
my first year of teaching then
in the university and your mother
was there teaching too,

how time must have passed!

now you are a lawyer
pregnant on your second child
and defending a case
of your classmate in my court.

how time must have passed!

swiftly, so swiftly like a bird
falling out from the edge of the horizon

like a gaze falling out from the seams
of our visions

how time must have passed!

yet i feel nothing that i have to worry
there is no one in my house to stay
when my time to leave shall finally come.