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Would that trolley ever get to Chestnut Hill?
Seedy, orange, rattling like Hell’s toolbox,
how would it climb those Heights?
How would I climb those heights? Swan-necked,
direct from high school, I weighed about
150 then, including the brown-bagged lunch.
It seems too simple now, Comparative
Anatomy, reading Etienne Gilson
in Park Street Station, Organic Chemistry,
all-nighters at the kitchen table
with a cat drowned in formaldehyde.
Don’t leave that thing lying around!
And later, the Great Vowel Shift,
the irregular Anglo-Saxon verb forms,
the years of “Wasted Earning Power,”
a matchbook cover phrase for
the oxymoron of sedentary pursuits,
my waistline pushing me ever to XL.
Brendan Galvin published his 16th collection of poetry, Whirl Is King: Poems from a Life List, in 2008. His composition here was commissioned in observance of Boston College’s 150th anniversary, which will be April 1, 2013.