Let me just plant in your minds:

This room smells like doomed grad school
crushes and yellowed paper.
For no reason, year round
there are wasps in the eaves.

Enrollments are low. We think
of ways to spruce ourselves up.
We pass around a tome
penned and published by one of our own.

From our tower, we look down
on kinesiology and planetary science alike,
and on downtown, its spread of commerce,
its ad men ants below.

The grassy quads square up, manned
by landscapers in drab.

But listen: the way one woman happened
to say the word evening –
it brought a wafting of oaky dregs,
a wisp of candle just blown out.