Alumnus

You can't leave anything alone in here.
Without outside influences, it will grow
Into a creeping vine, a mushroom ring,
Whatever shapes an unconstrained thing takes,

Becoming so little like what entered
The woods all alone one fine summer day
That any contact with its former self
Would not only transform it but kill it.

Even unpeopled locations run wild.
Here is a red-brick suburban campus
Someone spent years rebuilding in the trees.
It was a matter-of-fact, present place

With daily updates, once upon a time.
Students and teachers with heads of their own
And, presumably, wilderness inside,
Wandered around and scuffed the moss off things.

But that was a great many nights ago.
Nothing but dreams have troubled the pathways.
They're overgrown, dark, and glowing at once,
Grottoes for frail species that don't need eyes.