A syndrome too familiar to writers...

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Recorded Reading (1:47): https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/zbgy5jmi6zqutynh865x0/The-One-They-Insrantly-Forgot.mp3?rlkey=f9p1hoptml5oic4bjtt6k5gxj&st=ks01otpj&dl=0

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The One They Instantly Forgot

Sometimes it turns out to be
Although, it’s true, surprisingly,
That piece of verse discouraged writ
While you were in the thick of it
So full of glaring errors that
You wish some other had begat
Each mostly uninspiring line
Which nothing much seems to define

Worthy of reading, by the time
You’re squeezing out its final rhyme
And when you try to edit, there
Seems no way, to your great despair,
Its clumsy meter to adjust,
Decide the whole thing is a bust —
You know the one I’m talking of?
Well, that’s the piece people will love

Picking out the very part
Least delightful to your heart
They’ll praise lopsided meter and
Inexact rhyme right out of hand
“What truths that verse has helped me see!”
They’ll gush, “It really spoke to me
Thank you so much for sharing this
It put me in a state of bliss!”

And then again, those poems that
You worked much more carefully at
In a mood deliberate
Every rhyme a perfect fit
Complacently the page upon
You can make no improvement on
Its form nor yet its content, for
You feel perhaps never before

Have you so caught the very thing
You wish your readers’ hearts to bring
The product of so many years
You’re certain that it will bring tears
Healing thus precipitate
Long sought-for inner peace create
More often, you might hope, than not —
That one, they instantly forgot!

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