Egad! Poetry!

Egad! Poetry, Poetry, It's got the best of me.

Note to the reader:
Some 17 years ago I sat in a fourth grade classroom with an assignment to write a poem. “A poem! How dumb” I thought. Girls write poems on the back of notebooks. I found the assignment beyond challenging. After hours of complaining to anyone who’d listen, I got the best piece of advice from dear old Mom. She said, “Well, why don’t you just write a poem on how hard it is to write a poem.” What a great idea! I could complain and get credit for it. Mom’s a genius. However, the strange thing was as I wrote the poem I started to enjoy it. Mom helped me polish it up and I proudly turned in my masterpiece. Now many years and several dozen notebooks full of poems later, I realized that assignment was my epiphany to the world of writing. No matter what else I write, in my mind this poem will always be the greatest work I ever created.

Egad! Poetry, Poetry
Its got the best of me.

I'm having a hard time,
Thinking of a word to rhyme

Gadzooks! This is tough,
I never dreamed it'd be so rough

Writing this poem for you
Won't be an easy thing to do

I've read all the Greatest,
Yet I still make mistakes

Egad! Poetry, Poetry,
Its got the best of me.
-1985