POETIOLOGY

      If I was so inclined to be a poet
      when I was young, no evidence will show it;
      I have no scraps or remnants from those days,
      no still-abiding evidence of praise,
      nothing to indicate facility
      or prove poetical ability.

      But only after years of English teaching
      of others’ verse, I felt my spirit reaching
      to try my own hand at the games they played
      by following in patterns they had made,
      becoming in time a verse practitioner
      who daily sets his mental wheels a-whir,
      sitting as I do now to spin out lines,
      weaving them into resonant designs.

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