I loved the beautiful, even way Miss Tate formed her letters. I tried to make my printing look like hers. When our class wrote a thank-you letter to a man who brought an ant farm to our second-grade class for our science lesson, we all copied Miss Tate's letter off the blackboard. I tried hard to form my letters neatly, and my letter was chosen to send to the man. Everyone could see that it was the best. However, I left out a word in the middle. Our letter said "Thank you for to our class."
Miss Tate said that was all right, I could copy it over again. She let me work on it while the other kids had their reading lesson. I was sorry to miss reading, because I was good in reading, but I labored over the letter. My fingers cramped with the effort. When I was finally done, I took my letter to Miss Tate.
She read it out loud to me. "Thank for coming to our class," and that was no good either.
But Miss Tate said, “Never mind, it’s all right.” I think Miss Tate must have sent a letter of her own. I'm certain she would not have sent mine, with a word missing like that.
Miss Tate said we had all done well, and as our reward we were going to the school library. When she told us to line up at the door, I hurried to be first in line. She led us single file down the enclosed corridor of the school building. We paddled behind her like a row of baby ducks behind their mother.
The hall was dim, primarily lit by the open door ahead at the far end. Miss Tate wore a long-sleeved white blouse, fitted at the wrists. The sleeves were wide beyond all need, and they billowed as she walked, with the light from in front shining through them. I was filled with awe of her grace and power, or perhaps just with the beauty of the billowing sleeves. It was like a door opening on poetry and my soul.
At the end of the hall we turned left into the school library, and there we could pick up any book we liked. Wonderful books, with pictures and words I could mostly read.
I chose a book about the Huckabuck family, with Mama Mama Huckabuck, Papa Papa Huckabuck, and their daughter, who looked about my age, with the wonderful name of Pony Pony Huckabuck. They were farmers, this family. And one day, in a squash brought in from their field, Pony Pony, who was helping Mama Mama make supper, found a golden buckle that turned out to be magical and that brought all sorts of fortune and adventures to the Huckabuck family. It would be decades before I learned this was a famous poem by Carl Sandburg.
I loved the lavishly illustrated book. I begged Miss Tate to take it back to the classroom and read it to the class, and she said all right. After we listened to the story, Miss Tate asked us each to write a poem about it. She had read us poems before. We knew what they were. And though I had never written a poem, I grasped the principle of rhyme.
After we had written, we stood up one by one in front of the class and read our poems out loud. I still remember mine. Here it is, the first poem I ever wrote:
Pony Pony Huckabuck
Opened a squash and changed her luck.
As I said the words, I felt the rhythm of the two lines. With the word luck, I experienced the closure of rhyme, the satisfaction of a wooden box shutting with a snap. I saw a momentary look of surprise on Miss Tate’s face, followed by a smile and some word of praise.
Trying not to grin with pride, and with my paper wrinkling in my hand, I walked back to my desk and sat down, and I knew that when I grew up I would be a writer.