Cruising Around

Last week, The Oakland Review – managed entirely by CMU undergraduate students – announced its inaugural Poetry Prize.

The Tayur Endowed Poetry Fund will support two annual prizes recognizing exceptional emerging poets: the Tayur Poetry Prize, which will honor an outstanding book of poetry by an emerging poet selected for publication by CMUP, and the Oakland Review Poetry Prize, awarded for an exemplary poem published in CMU’s student-run literary magazine The Oakland Review.

My sincere thanks to the editors, judges, and student leaders who helped bring the prize to life.

Looking through a collection of photographs from the past few months (that many of you have already seen), I began to suspect I had accidentally wandered into a Billy Collins poem.

Cruising Around

For no particular reason
one morning,

after months of successfully avoiding it,

I decided to see
what the gym downstairs looked like.

It had been there all along.

I had been there all along.

We had somehow managed
to avoid each other.

Tom Brady was there.

Not on television.
Not in a commercial.

Just stretching.

A few months later,
I was in Las Vegas
talking about quantum and health.

When my panel ended,

Mehmet Oz arrived
for the next one.

For a brief moment,

a professor
and a politician

occupied
the exact same chair on stage.

I flew to Stanford
to talk with Al Roth
about organ transplantation.

That part
happened exactly as planned.

Not everything
requires serendipity.

“Can you snap our photo?”
I asked.

He agreed.

Nobel laureates,
it turns out,
can be surprisingly cooperative.

Nancy Pelosi, however,
was not on the agenda.

Neither were Roger Federer
or Jon Bon Jovi,

both of whom appeared
before the Super Bowl,

as though San Francisco
had briefly misplaced
the velvet rope.

Tim Cook was there too.

“You should hear
from the Academy soon,”
I whispered.

“I wrote one
of your letters.”

His eyes widened.

Then came
three namastes.

Not every thank-you note
arrives by mail.

Tony Xu and I
watched the game.

A day earlier,
I had lunch
with Candace Yano.

Tony still speaks
of her fondly.

Some lectures,
it seems,
outlast Super Bowls.

Josh Shapiro appeared
before the NFL Draft.

“Professor,”
he said,

“I was just
on the CMU campus
with robots.”

The future,
apparently,

had arrived
before the first pick.

Not long after that,

Simon Armitage arrived
carrying Gilgamesh,

who has been around
for roughly four thousand years,

depending on whom
you ask.

A few days earlier,

I had been speaking about
quantum manufacturing,

which, depending on whom
you ask,

may or may not be
four thousand years early.

Jensen Huang arrived
before commencement.

Everyone says
he is approachable.

They are right.

“Can you snap our photo?”
I asked.

He agreed.

A good sport,
as advertised.

Kanwal Rekhi arrived
to watch a documentary
about Kanwal Rekhi.

Walking over,

we re-enacted
the long-running debate

about which IIT
is the better IIT.

We settled it
with a friendly fist fight.

He conceded:

M stands
for Magnificent.

That was when
I began to suspect

I was accidentally living
inside a Billy Collins poem.

Not one of the sad ones.

One of the wandering ones.

He sailed alone
around a room.

I appeared to be
cruising around the country.

A quarterback.

A TV-doctor.

A Nobel laureate.

A governor.

A poet laureate.

A tennis legend.

A rock star.

A technology visionary.

A few entrepreneurs.

A Speaker of the House.

And a professor
whom one of them
still remembered.

Each appeared briefly,

then returned
to the business
of being themselves.

As for me,

I keep

cruising around.