There is a certain pleasure
in reading obscure biographies
of the decidedly lesser lights
of their respective fields.
Inevitably a writer assiduously
struggles to avoid mention
of the great men and women
who define the discipline,
and the books are shorter,
for even if their lives were visited
by great trials, and even if
they overcame obstacles,
we all know they ascended
only so far, and we,
at the foot of the mountain
can easily see their labored progress
and convince ourselves that we too,
if we chose to show
the effort, could easily
outpace them, and in turn
become the stuff of books
to plague their grandchildren.

First published in Books, Truth Serum Press (Australia), 2023
obtainable at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CNXXQVRK/