To a New Librarian Who Thinks I Don’t Write Poetry

Poets come in many shapes

Tall, lanky girls dressed in drapes;

Moon-round ladies who rhyme;

Well-worn gents wearing chaps;

And sexy ladies who sit on laps

Writing sonnets, and love poems,

And the one poem everyone

Reads out at funerals.

There are white-haired poets who farm;

Curly-haired poets who alarm

The ladies, and howl at the moon.

Poets who dance, and poets who can’t;

And poets who stand at the podium and rant;

Poets who use no capital letters;

And poets who write around the edges of the page.

I knew a poet once who wrote

Between the lines on his palm

Though today he’d probably write

On a palm-pilot instead.

Why do you think I don’t write poetry?

Am I the wrong shape, the wrong age,

The wrong size, the wrong gender,

Or have you just not gotten down to the Ys yet?