Dr. Wise

His hands are like fences--
pink and fat--
growing out of knuckles
that hang in blunders as
he speaks of a flower--
a pretty girl--
syllables chasing commas,
gestures leaping through
ill-pronounced words.

Daisy Miller.
What is this genre?

Those eyes,
glued behind flat glass,
stare openly at none of us.
A poem?
A conversation?
A bright pen in a pocket?
My mind gnaws on these things,
then drops them from its
soft gums--half-chewed ideas
in a class of manners.

I will not answer.
My arms are rooted to the desk,
Blocking the scholarly impulse
and all ties to language.
Let him sort through the pages--
these bodiless brains of paragraphs--
and stare at the ears and sweaters
that may possibly cut
through the spaces between
stiff, damp fingers.