The first thing i ever wrote,
As best as i can recall,
Was with pieces of colored chalk
On a clean, white concrete walk.
In red i wrote a triangle,
But its lines weren’t very straight.
With blue i wrote a circle,
But its curvings didn’t meet.
In green i drew a tree,
and a cat i drew in black.
But my friend Annalee said
“Cats don’t look like that!”
She bid me, “Draw a stick man,
and a stick girl in a skirt.”
But i ran out of concrete walk
and chalk won’t write on dirt.
Then Annalee took my hand
and we skipped our way back home.
i didn’t know it way back then,
But i had just written a poem.
The concrete walk is in Saranac Lake
and the poem is there to this day.
It can only be seen when poetry rains
and it can’t be read when it’s dry.