It was in junior English class--- poetry!
Learn and recite five hundred lines you see.
And there we sat staring off in space Jim and me;
Now, "Casey at Bat", was kinda fun but in the summer?
Without learning poetry we would fail what a bummer!
Jim liked hunting, fishing things outdoors you see,
But both of us were held over summer a pain you agree.
"If" by Rudyard Kipling took up some of the slack;
Trying to find five hundred lines a line of books was stacked
The task finished we looked at each other as brothers,
We would leave the reading of poetry to all the others,
Forty years we drifted apart and I saw him again.
When he heard I wrote a book of poetry all he could do was grin.
On the letter from home he said, "I wrote a poem too!"
And I put it on my site as an old friendship we now renew.