I’m seeing it again.

There was a time.

There still is, or could be.

I was young once, when the world was young with me. We were the new generation, the hope of the future. We had a young President who acknowledged us, “passed the torch.”

How lucky I was to teach the next generation. We sat together, and I passed them on.

There were classrooms all over the earth where teachers taught and students learned.

There still are.

It’s the resilience of youth. You can beat them down, drug them, suppress them. They come back, like the spider in the drain.

In cycles, the flood sweeps over the earth, clearing away. From the barren muck, new sprouts emerge. They grow. The mower comes to cut them down. They spring up fresh, the heads bloom.

I reach out my old experienced hands to gather them in.

My hands are full.