(How A Reimer Became A Rhymer)

boarding school
what’s a child to do
assignment from a forth-grade teacher
write a poem that expresses what you love

well, being a fifth of five siblings
(that’s six in all)
and never before
being ever asked
to express anything 
that anyone 
might listen to 
at all,
let alone about what he loved...

and what’s more,
teacher never told him
a poem didn’t need to rhyme all the time,
that free verse would substitute...
just fine for a rhyme
so again i say,
what’s a child to do... but write
(or find a rhyme that speaks his heart).

couldn’t write (or so he thought)...
so find a poem, an inspiration
he must,
to get his poet’s juices flowing,
but where, and how...
and so he asked his teacher.
“Ms. Vreeland, teacher fair,
to find my poet inside
where or where would a child look?
perhaps a script that i could read,
perhaps, perhaps a book... perchance?"
"here, try this," she told him,
"this will help to know the score,
read, indulge, become as one,
and let your inner poet soar."

so, read, he did... and find, he found,
a write that had the very bound,
the rhyme, the sound,
the symbol of a land he loved,
his own by heritage, though not by home,
the pride inside he felt,
victory his, the hand was dealt.
Alfred Tennyson, a Lord they said
his writing rich, his perfect words
this, the prize, a perfect guarantor
in just an instant chosen for
the frame, the whole, 
changes, two, or one... no more
and he’d be done, the perfect crime
did i say crime, no! i meant mine,
for would not *your changes make it thine?

and here his twisted thoughts he’d wound
became untwisted, crashing down
how and why? quite simply done
because all he changed was simply one
from one word, "azure," 
to one word, "blue,"
who, would think that this, would do?
no one, right? not even you?
not i, for certain, that’s for sure,
yet, it was i, 
the one who swallowed this dark lure!

so, here's Alfred’s version, and next is mine
don't you really love it's rhyme?

ALFRED’S
The Eagle
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

MINE
The Eagle
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the blue world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

and turn this in, he did
and heard from her, she wrote *”Very Good”
but, who knew she’d think that this deserved
an entry in a book of verse
who thought that anyone 
away back home where he was from
ten thousand miles away,
who would ever wonder, ever know?
yeah, you guessed it... busted!
his fingerprints so easily dusted
exposed, cover blown,
bad seeds sown 
came home to roost,
except...

that's not where this story ends
for he is me and that day was born
a poet no, but rhymer sworn
in name for sure, but so much more
for it was this, that opened door
to what he's become
has come to love
and this is when this Reimer
became a lifelong rhymer!
for what's a child to do, but...

become a poet... i suppose!