The Learned One

The Learned One 

The learned one admires 

degrees and edification 

over true substance, 

length over brevity,   

complexity over simplicity, 

artificiality over authenticity, 

going on and on and on, 

ad nauseam. 

The one whose learning 

comes from a life rich

in metaphor, dishes 

out sentences stripped 

of complexity, yet deeper 

than describing the sixteen 

ways a tree bends for all 

of sixteen pages that comprise 

the learned one’s epic tome. 

What a world we might create 

if we simply spilled blood upon the page 

like Hemingway describing bullfighting!

©Paul Goldman April 20, 2022

[photo by Flickr ]