Diary of the Woodsman’s Daughter

While others clerked in town, our papa worked
the woods in back — yet never yearned for much —
where words, like trees he felled, would simply skirl
as from a horse’s mouth… Axe. A chainsaw,
hammer and maul — not items that a school-
girl has in mind when she first seeks to rhyme
her raw poiesis.
………………………..I never meant to laugh,
when, meaning to please, our papa mispronounced
the word, and said po-eet instead. Oh, how
it echoed, like a mockingbird’s lament,
throughout a dark and drafty house, and drove
poor mama further south—that moony noun
our papa mauled. “Po-eet,” my brother chirped;
“Po-eet,” my sister mocked — Enough! I might
have yelled. Unlearned as papa was, he spoke
a blunt iambic beat until his stroke.