Sustainable Anxiety

Dear Colleagues,

Anxiety faces new classes like
Jone’s Mt. katy-dids: cranking
all night short circuiting the
manic mockingbird braying
unceasingly since May.

Irrational, of course: my fears.
Beyond reason; primordial.
Viscerally: millions of small
legs rub against each other
fiddle-de-de nd no cracking
morning yawns breaking
the tension.

A class full of students
stunned stupid, yearning
to study what I got to give,
missives impossible—
liberal art of language
and fiction.

All that already knowing
experience, wit, savvy,
juggling calculus & bio.
art & women’s studies,
physics & Appalachian
culture, philosophy &
the psychology of creativity:
acting in plays, pursuing
piano, statistics & environ-
mental economics knowing
much more than I do &
young—negotiating relation
ships: status & strokes &
ah! sustainability.

I’m boss.
Sustain THAT!

They do what I say.
Come to class. Listen (obey).
Some take notes. Prepare them
selves to identify random quotes
from various texts & tell the
textual significance of
parts to wholes.

They will remember titles
and characters and themes
related to ah, humania:
its fine arts.

And adopt the terms of
linguistics & literary
criticism so as to be
able to talk like an
Egyptian.

“Privilege” for example: to prefer
one side of a binary pair.
Good over Evil, say
Order over Random.

Just like it always was.

I throw a black plastic sheet over
them so to speak: holes in it allow
only talk-about-literature-&-language
going on and nothing about all that
other stuff they study from them
other COURSES.

I got this idea walking thru
the garden: our local food
source. A strawberry patch
covers up and denies any
thing but strawberries.
NBS: other wise a weedy
riot of uncontrolled growth
and random noise.

Thank god for the grade-gun
& its ex-officio institutional
authority. Hard balls & mallets
croquet. Totalitarian. Benevolent.
Enlightened: this spot!

My personality?
Enthusiasm,
Charisma,
Sparking wit &
flaming intelligence?
Vox de Auctoritas.
Would that attract them
otherwise like moths to a
back porch light jamming
old-timy fiddle tunes with
an intellective gleam: the
love of yearning & a
Swannanoa gathering?

Lasso Fair.

I have to compete against
the common rigor. This
makes me anxious once
katy-dids start cranking,
Bele Chere, & the end of
another summer.

Sustainable?

Sam