"Lit Instructor"

Day after day up there beating my wings

With all of the softness truth requires

I feel them shrug whenever I pause:

They class my voice among tentative things,

And they credit fact, force, battering.

I dance my way toward the family of knowing,

Embracing stray error as a long-lost boy

And bringing him home with my fluttering.

Every quick feather asserts a just claim;

It bites like a saw into white pine.

I communicate right; but explain to the dean-

Well, Right has a long and intricate name.

And then saying of it is a lonely thing.