Students writing their PhD dissertations, that gobstruck time,
wandering like zombies, as though they’ve been whacked
on the head with some weighty tome,
they hear a different kind of music while they compose,
run scales maybe no one else has ever run before,
on their way perhaps to a Carnegie profound performance.
So, so funny how, sometimes in the morning, fresh from recovering sleep,
that time when they have hopefully been fortunate
to escape suffering bizarre bogies summoned by their thesis brooding,
they absent-mindedly stab at humming yesterday’s tune while squeezing an orange,
or try to,
while blending a deep green genius powering smoothie,
really try to,
but with awakening realization they’ve forgotten how the melody goes,
they fail to recall the thrill of it all, that euphoric, euphonious used-to-be,
but not now,
so they head panicked, beelining it to the computer
to reread what insights have gone off to dissolve in the mist of yesterday,
no longer comprehending, even after multiple frenzied perusals,
what in the blue-blazed earth they were endeavoring to propound.
Then, taking many deep breaths, a calming mental beat,
they sit composed as can be under such circumstances,
and attempt regathering those now disparate, discordant notes
flown wide in whirling drafts and redrafts around them,
seek the lost rhythm, tapping a foot down deeper, deeper,
searching out the resurrection of their insight,
heating up again on the trail of that next aha! measure.
Well, maybe not so funny at that very moment.
Lanning Lee 