The Look of Longing

Distant, far-off

Forlorn

The look of longing

Looks everyday

Out the windows of my class

It peers reflected through forty sets of black eyes

It looks through the black board

Beyond the white painted bricks

It looks past the school, past the land, past the mountains

It looks out across the oceans

It is a look of having never seen the sea

A look of never having peered down

From the window of an airplane

The look of longing

Silently importunes me a question

A question breathed on forty silent lips

The look of longing

Begs me a question I cannot answer

It seeks solutions I cannot offer

Everyday I stand helplessly

Before the forty sets of looking eyes

Without any answers but to look back

In hopeless longing

And shared silence