On the Poetry Front
I began to write quite late in life,
when the Covid pandemic struck,
to while away my time judiciously.
A few successful poems encouraged me
to persevere, to burnish my technique. 
Oh yes, so keen was I to improve 
I laboured hard and long. My one regret:
I wished I’d begun when I was young.
I might have honed the skills I needed,
for instance, the iambic da-DUM, da-DUM
and brought my trochees under control.
Just as a boxer must develop his skill,
I had to work on the rhythm of mine
instead of reeling from line to line 
like a drunken sailor on liberty
or a punch-drunk Marlon Brando
as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront
who mumbled to his brother, Charley,
in the back of a car: “I coulda been
a contender. I coulda been somebody.”