“Professor” By J. B. Hogan

Once a brilliant young professor, 

expert on Wordsworth, Coleridge,

classically educated academic star,

feted, celebrated, shining in classroom, 

literary journal and at cocktail hour.

He knew his way around a liquor cabinet,

the local university watering holes,

developed a heavy smoking habit,

kept a half-full cup of clarity on his 

office desk and in the classroom,

sipped from its dregs hourly.

Then, one late fall day, late in his career,

he fell, tripped and fell, felt weak and fell.

By Christmas it had spread like fire,

from the kidneys to the back,

inoperative, fatal.

Buried on a cold day in February,

a sparse crowd recalled his intelligence,

his erudition, his incomplete promise.

Back at school, a janitor found the 

cup, considered it, then tossed it in the

trash and swept up the empty classroom.

J. B. Hogan has published over 300 stories and poems and eleven books, including Bar Harbor, Bounty Riders, Time and Time Again, Mexican Skies, Tin Hollow, Living Behind Time, Losing Cotton, The Rubicon, Fallen, The Apostate, and Angels in the Ozarks (nonfiction, local professional baseball history). He lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.