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Written During a Lecture on the Scientific Method

by Andrew Bashford

Even the man on the corner, with the trenchcoat

and the cane, pronouncing “Wo, wo, [and] wo”

unto shoppers, commuters, and boys skipping

mass, paused when the funnies, like manna,

distilled from the sky.

Some news-office window was open

somewhere, and a plague in four colors,

a newspaper swarm, fluttered to earth,

bearing terrible puns from on high.

From walking to gawking, the Sunday crowds turned

with their fingers towards heaven.

Then the man filled his lungs and rattled

his Bible to bellow a torrent

of brimstone, but a vision restrained

him– a boy and a tiger, a beagle,

a tabby, the scrape of the toaster,

the hiss of the eggs, the bass

of his dad reading jokes at the table.

So the man stowed his prophets,

their sackcloth and ashes. He snatched

up a paper and pushed through the blizzard

to a bench in the square where he stood

and delivered, his voice like his father’s, a sermon

from Comics C:4.