This is poetry month, and most of us have more time to observe it than usual. I have always taken the designation as an excuse to read extra poetry. This year with the extra time, I’m trying my hand at writing some. Now there are true poets from the past that I love, like Emily Dickinson, Ogden Nash, Arna Bontemps, and James Whitcomb Riley. Present day poets that I favor include Joyce Sidman, Margarita Engle, and Nikki Grimes. These are all real professional poets, and I am aware that I’m not one of them.
I’ll give an analogy for the reasoning behind my own efforts. A kid can watch a professional basketball player and know full well that he will never play at that level and still enjoy going out and shooting hoops at the goal in the back yard. Another kid might watch a gymnast score a perfect ten in gymnastics at the Olympics and know that kind of performance is beyond her reach but still enjoy doing hand stands or cartwheels on the lawn.
So here is my effort at a poem – just a shot at the hoop or a cartwheel on the lawn.
Needing Help
A fairy godmother, a genie, a gnome -
Where have the bestowing muses gone?
I cried out about my writing need,
But to my voice, they gave no heed.
My writing wishes weren’t grand or new.
Surely, they’d grant just one or two:
- In place of words that limp and whine,
Some verbs and nouns that dance and chime;
- For characters who plod and stagger,
Replacement ones that strut and swagger;
- For my mind, a detour to circumvent
The writer’s block on which it’s bent;
- And when my “show” begins to “tell,”
A loudly ringing obnoxious bell;
- And most of all, my mail could be better
with an editor who writes an acceptance letter.
But sprites and their magic continue to shirk.
There’s nothing for me but to go back to work.