mmccxvi

If Dr. H had been the Chair
of the Poetry Department (if 

such a department even exists there,

I admit that I don’t even know.), rather

than the Chair of the Theatre
Department at my undergraduate
college. 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 proclamation
that my one true goal above all else 

in my life was to someday pen a poem 

that would 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.”