Friday, May 25, 2007

Something About This Time of Year Makes the Poetry (And the Sangria) Flow.

A Professor's Sigh

I’m trying to imagine how it went:
You right-clicked. Copied. Pasted. Fixed the font.
While conscious, right? You’d not been hypnotized?
You weren’t held hostage? Threatened with your life?
And then, you. . .what? Forgot to cite your source?
You meant to cite your source but put it off?
And when you tried—you really tried—to cite
Your Googled source you couldn’t figure out
Which source it was? That strikes me as odd.
I Googled just one phrase, and there it was.
Your source. But here’s the part that baffles me.
Quotation marks? You do know what they are,
I assume. Do they not use them where you’re from?

Or were you hoping that I wouldn’t see
What you had done? Or that I wouldn’t care?
Dishonest? Sneaky? Mean? Just sloppy? Dumb?
Or all of the above? Or wait—I know—
It really is my fault. You didn’t learn
And thus I didn’t teach. Just goes to show
How wrong so many folks can be. I’ve earned
The rank of full professor. My class evals
Are almost always good. I’ve won awards.
Ha ha! Stupendously, I’ve fooled them all.
I’d like to leave you with a few more words.
The ones I’m thinking of are all obscene.
Instead, I’ll simply finish with a sigh.
This mattered and you didn’t get it. Why?