Bells on Bascom Hill

Bells sound in the afternoon on Bascom Hill,
Ringing welcome to each quarter hour.
Blows of noise are a drug, a pill she swallows—
Sweet with sound. She tastes each note

Throughout discussion, the flavors dwindling
Beneath saccharine layers of mathematics,
Series, integrals, heavy with a chalky bitterness.
Hammer on metal fills her brain with a cloud

Of dreaming sunlight, her mind wandering amongst lessons.
Hallucinations, induced by resonant sound’s
Giddiness, trace her footprints through the dirt.
She tracks her own steps up the hill in the late evening

To chase the last knowledge that classes will offer
To her. At long day’s end, she’ll sit at the top of the hill
And watch the stars come out, pinpoints of future and hope,
One by one in the darkness, with the dark water below.