I did talk,
while I did walk.
I did sulk,
and I did dare to bulk
when they told me I could make more sense
(at only my ignorance's expense)
when I avoided "did" to change a verb to past tense.
Oh, once in a while, that made for a difficult time,
but Cunningham taught me to solve that problem, in due time.
Starward
Author's Notes/Comments:
The poem refers to the greatest rhyming poet of the 20th century, J. V. Cunningham. His Collected Poems taught me to rhyme properly---and that did not mean using "house" to rhyme with "crown." My earliest poems were often rhymed inaccurately on vowel sounds. It is vowel sounds plus the consonants that follow: "class/pass" "past/last," and not "class/last."