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'How shall I put so many words

Into one little book?'

She said, in all seriousness

To her father on the train,

Puzzling over summer homework tasks

Epics for a six year old's young brain

Is there any difference

Between her and me?

Wrestling with the words that fail

To say what I intend;

Sitting upon the page they seem to sneer

At my poor attempt to shape the bend.

For where she writes with simple ease

Letting each sentence fall

With little thought for what will come

Till it's on the page,

My efforts are more often rubbed from view

Reducing me to impotence and rage.

Oh that my muse was a little child

And not a lecturer

Free to invoke the strange and wild

Rather than provoke

The fretting of an aging man who yearns

To free himself and throw off the yoke.

Brian Hick August 2014

©copyright Sally Hick 25.9.25