The bus to central campus coughs
through puddles and away.
Rain starts again, only enough
to emphasize the cold,
which seems, more than the rain,
responsible for a basalt sky.
The nearest lights are in a classroom –
not warm, although the room must be:
ceiling fluorescents, and a screen
invisible from this angle. The students,
drawn to whatever process it explains,
take notes and do not text;
their prof, from a chair like theirs, comments.

This too is someone’s future – someone
long dead who could only identify
the bricks of the buildings, the rain,
or not even those if everything
terrified. Who could not account
for the lights, the withdrawing bus,
the presence of young women
in a classroom (if he recognized a classroom),
the leisure of these people
(whom he would not perceive as quasi-children),
their cleanliness, their height.
Perhaps he would first grasp a wall,
because everything to him,
nature, what he called God, was
a wall of some sort. Basic advice
for time-travelers: it all
makes sense to them, even if not to you.
(Conceivably also true of an afterlife.)