A Pair of Essays Although awarded a degree forty years ago, I owe my school a pair of fifteen-page essays due on my birthday tomorrow. In one, on Keats’ “To Autumn,” I argue that bones unearthed by Lawrence in Arabia dance certain sambas to spell out the autograph of their killer. The bones to which Keats refers form the skeletal figure dozing over the cider press. I’m not fooled. Research for this paper took me to an auto graveyard in Putney, where the topic of autographs stirred a thousand memories of long New England autumns with top down and radio blaring. The other essay mentions dump trucks loaded with rare earth ores, and men so obsessed with certain women they commit the most vicious crimes to claim their attention. Unsure of my subject or argument, research requires me to commit a crime of my own. I’ll throw my chainsaw into the truck of my car and hope opportunity arises. Snow trickles from an insincere sky. Pages of my essays tremble as wood heat radiates in waves. Another hour or two of research and then I’ll finish and mail the essays to defunct professors who’ll be so happy to get them they’ll laugh aloud in their graves. William Doreski