failure doesn't come with cookies

There is really no such thing as failure.
It’s an easy lesson to learn.
Ingredients are your words, like chocolate
and coconut cream. You mix in a few
dates and hazel nuts, chopped fine.

Now, this is no good for elephants,
much too sweet and not enough fiber,
they like grass and leaves.
So you must create a proper protagonist…

Children. Excellent idea!
What do they like to do
before snack time? Merry-go-rounds?
Swing sets? Kicking up piles of colorful fall leaves?

You don’t believe it yet? Not enough vivid images?
They're just crossing the park after school,
it's a sunny day, and darkness won't fall
for another two hours. They're safe —
a policeman sits on a green bench watching.

Imagination beats failure. Like rocks and scissors.
How to get them to eat the cookies?
(Adults always ask silly questions!)
Children who play a lot get hungry.
Someone decides that a grumbling tummy
is not really a fun game, so they play
a game of tag while running home,
joking about rumbles from their insides.

The cookies have come out of the oven now.
How, you ask? Obviously we needed
a dedicated white-haired grandmother
home safely, thinking about snack time
who did all of the behind-the-scenes mixing.

Why bother? With a few ideas,
nothing becomes a waste of words;
the ingredients are found in fertile imaginations.
Although some may ask naively
about quality — indeed another chapter
to be composed only on a rainy day —
I’m satisfied that my simple words today
are absolute proof that I did not fail.
Don’t you hear the children laughing?



failure doesn’t come with cookies
[2007.29.9…a]
Written for the Writer’s Cramp

Tied for First Place - 29 september, 2007