I'm whiplashed into now. 
Wiping sleep from my eyes, the dream
lost before I allow

myself to grasp it, to plough
the meanings I knew while asleep. Sunbeams
color the blinds, and I'm up, brush teeth, shower,

and put on the uniform of the eternal now,
a school & a job mine for what seems
like forever. Become Mr. Garza somehow

to a campus just awakening. Children in full flower,
fair & eager & scared & gleaming
in effortless, lithe power.

Room after room, the what's & how's 
of a subject made redundant, teen-
age wasteland in the flesh, all bowed 

under the burden to follow 
in someone's path, a pristene
record & resume. But how

to silence their inner voice, louder
each year, that the meaning 
is in the measuring? Can you roust 
them to see their beauty right now?