Eerie

Quiet classrooms, solemn stone,

Scholars paint over Hopper’s Nighthawks,

Painting inside the lines,

Following the sides of buildings 

And lonesome figures.

Mellow jazz echoes off the walls,

And half the class lies in a penumbral state

While the other half slathers Hopper’s dreams 

In shades of yellow, gray, and green.

Little monks who know not what they color,

Who paint by numbers,

Knowing if they continue they will wind up with an image.

Yet they do not know that their fates

Could twist towards those figures illuminated

And their solitary cups of coffee

In diners, in middle age, 

Who solemnly ponders the dreams of childhood.

While the world outside turns,

The streetlight turns green,

Their ambitions dissolve like sugar cubes

In liquid charcoal.

Let them paint and wonder,

Let them question the faces and figures

In the window,

Those shadows which seem eerily familiar.