Among the Intellectuals

[KEN DICKINSON]

Among the Intellectuals

They were a restless tribe.

They did not sit in sunlight, eating grapes together in the afternoon.

Cloud-watching among them was considered a disgusting waste of time.

They passed the days in an activity they called “thought-provoking,”

as if thought were an animal, and they used long sticks

to poke through the bars of its cage,

tormenting and arousing thinking into strange behaviors.

This was their religion.

That and the light shining through the stained-glass ancestors.

They preferred the name of the tree

to the taste of the apple.

I was young and I wanted to prove myself,

but the words I learned from them transmuted me.

By the time I noticed, the change had already occurred.

It is impossible to say if this was bad.

Inevitably, you find out you are lost, really lost;

blind, really blind;

stupid, really stupid;

dry, really dry;

hungry, really hungry;

and you go on from there.

But then you also find

you can’t stop thinking, thinking, thinking;

tormenting, and talking to yourself.

—Tony Hoagland 

[Patricia Rios]

Wow, so clear, this is what happens to all of us at different times and to different degrees, and to some, big time and almost all their life...

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[K. Lauren de Boer]

I’m going to really enjoy that nice cool sweet honeycrisp apple in the fridge today….

K. Lauren de Boer
Youtube handle: @terravitamedia
Website: terravitamedia.com

[Trudi Richards]

Yikes, so terribly accurate! and impossible to say if it is bad...

On Thu, Feb 5, 2026 at 7:55 AM 'KEN DICKINSON' via A Poem For Today <po...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

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Trudi Lee Richards

Winged Lion Words & Music

https://wingedlion.org

https://silosmessage.net

https://redbluffpark.org

Do not imagine that you are alone in your village, in your city, or among the infinite worlds.

Do not imagine that you are enchained to this time and this space.

Do not imagine that upon your death, loneliness will become eternal.

- Silo's Message