Friday, August 22, 2014

mmccxvi

If Dr. Henenberg had been
the Chair of the Poetry Department
(does such a department exist?  I
admit I don't even know.), rather 
than the Chair of the Theater
Department.  Let’s say.  And if I,
the overly-confident and determined
undergraduate junior, had made an
appointment with her, and on that 
appointed hour had then walked 
into her office with the pro-
clamation that my one true goal
above all other goals in my life
was to someday pen a poem that
would someday find its way into a
very important compendium of the
sort that is often touted as a
compendium that houses
several very important works
(of this or that poetic nature), 
well,     I can hear her say to me 
as if it were this precise moment:
        “But young man,
what do you know of Poetry?”
She’d know, of course,
that I had been a chemistry
major for the previous two
years.  “What you’re telling me
certainly isn’t Poetry.  Talk to me
about Poetry.  You must most
certainly know that you are not
reciting for me a Poem.  No.
What you’re telling me now is
nothing but a silly & ultimately
penniless dream.”  And she’d 
bite this part off through
teeth that are clenching the
spindly end of one of the
thin, golden, ear-hugging arms 
of those Ben Franklin specs,
“And it’s not a very 
effective dream,
I might insert.”