"The Future of Teaching"

At the end of the my teaching career,

decades from today,

will there be rows of desks,

posters on the walls,

newspaper clippings narrating your many victories?

I’m not sure about desks 

but screens of some kind will displace the newspaper,

your accomplishments flashing in lights around the room.

Desks will be out of vogue.

Rows, a laughable anachronism

from the days of paper and homework.

I myself might even be a hologram,

a shadow full of Dickens and Shakespeare

teaching other shadows.

I will never see your face.

I will never know, really know, what you think.

I won’t even enjoy catching you texting each other,

intra-mental computer chips making your fingers unnecessary.

And I won’t even laugh when, like today, you -

18-year-olds who can vote and go to war -

become immobilized

by a beeping telephone truck outside our classroom,

because, like you and me,

the truck too will be a mere shadow,

not even kicking up dust on a street no longer there.