You don’t have to be great to start but you have to start to be great. – Zig Ziglar.
This is a poem I was forced to write to pass an English class at Danbury State Teachers College. Or Western Connecticut. Thinking maybe 1972.
A couple of notes from the professor in a blue ink scrawl. “A good study in frustration.” And “good poem.“
Think this is the class where I was looking at a list of the final grades posted on a wrinkly glass door window. I was upset to receive a B+.
Until I realized my B+ was the highest grade in the class.
More proof you can be the best and still not be much good.
– JDW
A Letter To The Editor
The day you told my mind to write,
I knew it would be something trite.
I knew it would be something bad.
An A, an F – that seems so sad.
No idea have I of verse.
It could be long, it could be terse.
It seems it could be something good,
And then again, I think it should.
I want to write a poem of love.
The snow below, the clouds above.
But can I write what is to be?
A verse for you, a poem for me.
My love cries out to be my song.
Can this be right, or is it wrong?
It’s wrong if I just write for you.
It matters most when love is true.
If you had said (with muttered curse),
I’d like from you your best or worse,
I think I might have found the time
To weave for you a tangled rhyme.
But since I really want to write
about my wife, our love, our plight,
I cannot tell where it is at.
I love you, girl, and that is that.
Next time, write that poem, the professor advised.