i love stumbling upon advice from wizened sages,
who'd 'semble the tao of writing decent poetry
into a clever, lengthy monologue

read years earlier (just a few), it might save me
a hundred odd embarrassments
that, today, bear my name

like the time my kid balled his fists up
'cause i said so
but got knocked down, again, by the playground bully

not a Quakerly thing to do...
i'm still learning, too
(maybe i didn't teach the right stance?)

or perhaps we learn more by our failures;
my little boy's muscular, a confident wrestler, now...
gets along with everybody - go figure

and he writes pretty good poetry  -
all by himself.