Let The Circle, Canto I Poem by Whitney Jones Olson

This, is the final hour, of the very last lecture,
of all my collegiate days.
and nights.
and oh - there's not been much difference, these last
four years - save the clamorous insistence of 'that cursed
nuclear furnace, ' whose appearance has, these many/few
years, heralded the arrival of lectures such as this,
from eight as the rooster crows (and one does, near
the graveyard) , until ten to eleven after many settings.
Actually, that congregation,
of obsessive, compulsive, Hydrogen,
has often risen to find me already
iceskating down sidewalks, buried in bibliographies,
and constructing technicolor pipecleaner molecules,
for the benefit of professing ivory-tower mysogynists, and brilliant ladies,
who write illegibly, and expect the penmanship of industry,
who stare too long, and give unrequested hugs,
who insist on having the last word, which is by and large often nothing more than a rearrangement of my own,
who come in hungover, and aver that they 'feel crunchy, '
who startle, jump, disappear, emote, blurt, quip, confine,
release, compliment, challenge, ignore, forget, demand,
inspire, hypnotize, repulse, recommend, imbibe,
endure, retire, charm, amaze, loan, empathise,
commiserate, amuse, entertain,
and, oh, so many verbs these pedagogues do,
but not to me, as an inferior, after this closing day.
When they (the inculcators) have not been near,
I have - oh, I have.
With this new progression, perhaps i may now be I.