I am pedantic
Not in the sense of fastidiousness
But more in the etymological sense of the pedagogue
Not in an insistence upon correctness
But that I am correct
And not so much correct
As amazingly effortlessly dauntingly erudite
As a child I played the teacher
With the Time-Life series of picture books
In Nature and in Science
With little brother
I six or seven
He three or four
I point to a picture
And he must identify
The primate feline echinoderm or monotreme
Ocelot brittle star or echidna
When I was ten big sister’s Girl Scout troop
Called me Human Dictionary
I corrected them
For while it is true said I
That my vocabulary is impressive
You should be more impressed
By the range of my general knowledge
Bolstered by recitations of
State capitals Hellenistic and Nordic mythologies
Recent mayors governors vice-presidents and presidents
And the theory of evolution
Forward to Pithecanthropus
Downward phylogenetically to zooplankton diatoms bacteria
And viruses many in those years merely suppositious
And later to the minutiae of the Rolling Stones
Their influences mistresses and psychotropic dabblings
But
As much as I love the display of knowledge
Which action I perform regularly like a rookie amateur
I am well aware that knowledge is limited
And therefore ignorance infinite
And I am ashamed to play the peacock nerd
But
I love knowledge also for its own sake
I played Balder the Brave
On the playground in second grade
In the 1980s I drank in
The free-play of the signifier
And the arbitrary and diacritical nature of the sign
And the dialectical image of Utopia
And I drank in huge quantities
Of pinot noir Jack Daniels Pabst Blue Ribbon and gin