[lit-ideas] Re: Sunday Poem

A student this week mentioned professors and perfection
in the same breath.
I believe she needs to see
the errors of my ways.

Last week, for instance, having finished lunch,
I took my plate to the dog's bowl outside.
Leaving the door open, I scraped the scraps off.
Spotting the opportunity, a fly buzzed in, hooked right,
collided with a window some way up the stairs.
It dropped, stunned.

Grabbing what was close--
a box of contraceptive pills, as it happened--
I smashed the beast,
thinking, as one does,
that this was
some kind of double jeopardy
in the eyes of right-to-lifers.

Dizzy from the speed of the hit,
I turned to descend stairs,
paid little attention.

Missing three, I dropped.
Stunned, I struggled
to bring myself once again perfectly to vertical,
then decided with alacrity,
that all this should be
thoroughly written up
as a potentially important study
on the varieties
of professorial vanity.


David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon

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