Edge of Knowledge

                                        by Ken Shiovitz

 

                  There is no train to the edge of knowledge.

                  No plane.

                  You have to go on foot.

                  Textbooks and summary lectures can only get you close.

                  Hack your own way through the dense cover.

 

                  Master's Degree Candidate,

                  Get personal directions from one who has been close,

                  One who has found another edge, and senses proximity.

                  Walk but once to your edge, and be changed.

                  Anticlimactic degree rewards your diligence,

                  Makes you marketable.

 

                  Doctoral Candidate,

                  Follow the edge.

                  Who could stop you anyway?

                  Define the chasm.  Live along it.  Survive alone.

                  You may die seeking a way across it,

                  Or one behind it.

                  But unless you leave your own chasm,

                  You are not marketable.

 

                  Grizzled veterans line known edges.

                  They survive where students have fallen.

                  Giant men.  An Ajax and Hector.

                  Battles will be won, honor granted.

                  Not gods, they too must fall eventually forgotten.

                  We honor them all in their anonymity,

                   Hairy and smooth alike.

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