Footnotes

Something a bit playful, having just heavily footnoted a historical study, I thought I'd ponder the relevance of footnotes in a poem.

Footnotes

We hide away, at the back of the book,
Lonely perhaps, as never a second look
By most readers. Maybe the small print,
Poor eyesight means needs must squint
To see us. And yet we are always there:
In academia, where there is great care
Taken to support the main body of text;
But often the reader is quite perplexed
At our complexity. For we give details
To substantiate the main text’s tales,
And arguments, references, comment;
So I like to think we are heaven sent,
By a scholarly angel, to bless the word,
And when the body of text is misheard,
Put the reader straight. And sometime
Chatty, sometimes deep, we chime
With the academic reviewer, but not
Always the public, dismissed as rot,
Because they do not fully understand:
We are the foundation, the hidden hand,
The buried treasure, the hidden gold,
And that is why we can be so bold,
For then our task is done, we can rest,
Assured that our wording is the best!