We’ve killed off Heathcliff once again, leaving him to haunt the moors with Cathy. The seniors have slid down the water slide (along with a posse of teachers–there is photographic evidence!) and into their futures, off now to work on senior projects before leaving us for good. The literary magazine has gone to press. It must be May.
The juniors shall turn to Romantic poetry. We shall wander near Tintern Abbey and muse upon a nightingale, a Grecian urn, the West Wind. And then we will saunter out into the sunlight and leave it all behind us for a few months. I can tell I am getting near the end because I have started daydreaming again about all the things I want to do this summer and all the books I will read.
The piles of essays stack up again for the end of a quarter, but at the end of the year, the stack feels less daunting. Somehow, we have punched most of our tickets. Only the scramble of end-of-year events remains; oh, and of course the last herculean feat of writing comments. Hollowed out but still standing–a teacher at the end of the year.
But always a time to celebrate–in the inimitable words of e.e. cummings:
“in Just-spring when the world is mud-luscious. . .”