The Cycle of This

The silence in this room echoed when the walls hung bare
Months later - slowly frames went up, schedules were taped
pictures arranged
And noise was muffled and silence is not quite so loud

And with a new term, we strip the walls again
Waiting for more things to come
To be taped, pinned, framed to keep the walls warm
and our hands busy

The endless cycle the repeats itself
varying in subtle ways
just different enough to be difficult, stressful, or frustrating to us
and yet entertaining to outsiders

The same smile, that same joke
The same story about black pants and white socks
gets a laugh everytime

You run out of good fresh ideas
Start banking on the ones that work
depend on the repeater participants to nod
in the right places
and laugh on queue

New to all the fresh faces
old hat for old-timers

Schools out, schools in
hard to tell where the year ends and the other begins