A Nursery Rhyme

When I was eleven years old, I

sat on the front porch and wrote

my first poem. I used the soft lead pencil I favored,

but time has not.

It had twelve lines, six couplets, three stanzas.

I rhymed it a-a-b-b, just like every poem should be.

I got to the end and sighed,

squinting into the sun and the summer-pink petunias,

and wrote at the bottom of the page of my notebook, spiral-bound,

in bigger print,

“I think I am finally becoming a real person.”