I sigh.

Poems are hard to write, and I have to write one.

I am not exactly a poet, though people guess that I am,

the same people that think I must dance ballet because my hair is in a bun.

I want to be a writer in the future, a newsgirl, but not a poet.

But I remind myself, any kind of writing is hard work,

like mentally breaking up earth, plowing fields and sowing many sentence seeds.

With the warm laptop on my lap, the washing machine oscillating and the finish line in sight,

I stare down another assignment.

And I like the click of the keys, even when it’s mostly the backspace key,

the lightning of thought striking screen

-- and occasionally, as Mark Twain would say, the lightning strike of the perfect phrase.

Someone once said, “When I run, I feel God’s pleasure,”

and I say, when I write, I feel God’s pleasure, the God

who gives good gifts but buries them in fields,

hidden until someone sacrifices much to dig them out.

Now the rocks are coming away from my field, and the weeds, and the thorns.

And I think, I am small, and I stink at sports, and I will not win “Miss Outgoing,”

but I can become a writer if only I keep chipping away with my spade,

or perhaps that would be my keys, even my backspace key.

I still sigh, but now it’s a different sigh.

~~

Virginia’s note: Mary wrote this for an Advanced Placement English class which she took on-line through the Florida Virtual School last year. Though she was already an excellent writer, this rigorous course stretched her! Mary is well on her way to being a “newsgirl.” She just had two articles about a church-state symposium printed on the front page of UCF’s Central Florida Future newspaper, and has applied to the Journalism school there. Here‘s the link to one of Mary’s articles: http://www.ucfnews.com/media/paper174/news/2005/09/29/News/Church.State.Sparked.Debate.In.Symposium-1002429.shtml