Mike Bayles: Old Botany

When a foot steps on a wooden floor
another chamber stirs.
I listen to the ways the building speaks
to the many parts of me,
the room where I take Intro to Psychology,
and the hallway where samples of seedlings
in wire cages break ground, as I.
Cubicles cluster around a common area
where subjects offer psyches
for graduate student grades.
On second, a maze winds its way
to teaching assistant offices,
painted in neon colors,
where I ponder trials of life.
Stories linger about third floor,
a place some say is abandoned,
unable to bear the weight of other lives,
unseen and left to wonder.
A step outside shows the aging face
observant of a verdant Central Campus
while I shadow its incarnations.