Learning To Write

Up comes the sun,

down comes the whip

Now the writing hardship

Gone with fun

No piece to write

Out comes the notebook,

down comes the whip

Now the writing hardship

Oh, my pencil shook

Scribbling day and night

Writing for the blog,

down comes the whip

Now the writing hardship

Verses until I am agog

Let the blog not be read

Up comes the sun,

and through practice I prevail

Writing no longer makes me wail

Soon poems flow by the ton

Now writing, I need not dread

Out comes the notebook,

and through practice I prevail

writing no longer makes me wail

Down to blog-writing I took

With writing, my book began to fill

Writing for the blog,

and through practice I prevail

Writing no longer makes me wail

And happy is my epilogue,

gaining a hard-earned skill

This poem was originally written both to tease and thank my mom. This poem jokes about how Mama drove us to write daily in order to improve our skills. "Down comes the whip" is only partially untrue. There have been multiple occasions when I have been day dreaming when Mama's vocal whip cracked down and sent my pencil racing across the page. I also want to thank her for making me practice so that writing comes more easily now. For example, the subject of this poem came to me one evening and it was easy to bring the details to paper. Regardless of what I write, I am still only grudgingly thankful. I suppose later I will thank Mama outright, but not yet!

In this poem, there are a few lines written directly to Mama that may not make sense to someone who has not spent a prolonged period of time with us. One line, "No piece to write," describes a daily problem with school: nothing to write about. The lines, "Oh, my pencil shook, Scribbling day and night" refer to my handwriting, which used to be reminiscent of a crazy squirrel's! Fortunately, this has changed with time, though not to the extent that might be nice.

The line most directed at Mama was, "Let the blog not be read." This one refers to an ongoing joke between Mama, Rabbit and me. Whenever we find out that there is another blog-reader, we always groan, because it means we have to continue writing for the blog, the quality should improve, and the chance of more people reading it goes up–a vicious cycle for us. Regardless of what else we say, it is now nice to have so many people reading and replying to the blog. Particularly because practice has prevailed upon us and our writing is improving.-Porter