This poem and Meter and Rhyme were inspired by reading a stack of my late mother’s and grandfather’s correspondence-poems. They didn’t so much write poetry, though, as play poetry. It was almost a game; they would write poems back and forth as conversations. They called them “pomes”, and I inherited a stack of them when my mother passed on. When I first read the collection of pomes in December of 1998, I found that some of them were very funny, and I found it sad that I hadn’t had the opportunity to play the game, too. After a few hours, I realized that I could play the game, in a way, and I wrote these pomes, inspired directly by some of the pomes I had read, and my mother’s jokingly self-proclaimed title, “Word Wizard”.
My grandfather wrote poetry,
And my mother, so did she.
Back and forth, they wrote their “pomes”,
They wrote enough to fill ten tomes.My mother’s gone now, and he’s not well,
And so, to me these poems fell.
I’ve read them all, (those that I’ve found);
Now in my head these rhymes abound.I wish to write, to poecize,
But I fear it’s languicide!
For I have not their skill with words,
I may not be a Word Wizard.I lack the meter, lack the rhyme,
My poetry’s a heinous crime!
And yet the job, it is a must;
I cannot fail, or betray their trust.They wrote these pomes, I know not why,
But now at rest their pens do lie.
Ink flows no more, their poems done;
Nevermore will they poke fun
At unicorns, or at the Muses,
Or at each others’ imagined abuses.I hope this poem satisfies
My sudden urge to eulogize.
And I hope, too, it starts a trend,
The Word Wizard line must never end!
So I declare my own the mantle,
And hope my works can hold a candle
To those of kin who went before
Whose wit is lost forever more.-David Safar, 12/28/98