Impressive in his houndstooth coat,
he is noticeably provoked
by crimes against Wallace Stevens.

Beneath his office window
a student meandering to class
takes a twig
of boxwood in his grasp and,
without a moment's thought,
casually plucks it off.

Seizing upon an epiphany,
(or moment of regret)
the Professor turned and said to me:
“We shall all be plucked in time,
or driven down beneath the tread
of farmer feet, in mud as red
and thick as congealing blood!
Driven down like grain
by men with callused hands.”

The world's weight now suspired,
he turned his gaze
to the walkways below,
signalling, I surmised, that I should go.

Death,
I had to concede
is an undignified affair:
random and incoherent in its sweep.
We are naked, riven,
utterly alone, and strewn,
once reaped,
into the soil that was our home.

But not the tall, brown men
of the whispering halls,
where fates are drawn and snipped,
(where capacious noses lightly drip)—
they are plucked with the tenderness of frost,
tucked into filing drawers,
and lost.