Lucky Bones

The Old Professor

75 the old professor Austin Warren’s New England Seminar at the University of Michigan, 1960 Grinding your teeth to brownish stumps you’d rasp each Tuesday afternoon at three Are all the pilgrims safely on the bus? Through the open windows summer dust mixed with the crump of mowers Transfixed we watched you grind your nubby teeth to stumps waiting for you to spur us through our jumps from Cotton Mather up through Emily Is every pilgrim happy on this bus? We never were sure when you were serious chaining your Camels unpuritanically grinding your browning teeth to nubby stumps and tossing questions far from the syllabus: Would you rather live on Broad or Beacon Street? Are Smith and Bradford riding the same bus? Wisdom consists in knowing what you love and how to share it like an autumn feast: Grinding your nubby teeth to brownish stumps you spat each pilgrim wiser from the bus ...