Poetry

I don't think other people are as enthralled with poetry as I am. I come by it naturally. My dad was a ring-tailed tooter at memorizing a rousing poem. He could recite "The Charge of the Light Brigade" at the drop of a hat. There was another one about Darius Green and his flying machine he did for me many times, and I need to find it again. He didn't memorize to please some teacher or get extra credit; that's for sure. I treasure his 8th grade English book. The pages are thick with Donald Duck comics of the era pasted over the pages he was supposed to study. When I read Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams (insert dozens of others here), I want to absorb those words, to savor them, to make them a part of my own worldview. It's not just serious poetry either. On this bracelet I put one of my Ogden Nash faves:
The Panther
Should you behold a panther crouch
Prepare to say ouch!
Better yet
If called by a panther
Don't anther!