Emily Booker
Free Writing
You
gave us that poem—
“There
is no frigate like a book,”
it
said—
and
some of the boys laughed,
cackling
like the crows
that
Terry always writes about.
“Frigate!”
they cried.
“Frigate! Frigate!
Frigate!”
And
you passed out the dictionaries
and
made us read about a frigate
and
see the little picture
printed
there.
And
so they settled down
(the
boys, that is),
and
then you asked,
“So
how is a book like a frigate?”
“Old-fashioned,”
said James Kuhl, III,
“and
slow,”
the
only mildly funny things he’s ever said,
And
his friends laughed,
and
his enemies laughed, too,
knowing
the best way to kill a king
is
to be his friend.
But
I know exactly how
a
book is like a frigate—
better than a frigate is what she
actually said
and
what she meant,
Emily
Dickinson, I mean,
who
wrote that line.
But
if you think
that
I am going to raise my hand
and
tell you what I really think,
about
this—
or
anything else, for that matter—
well,
you
have got a lot to learn
about
books and boats …
and
me.
No comments:
Post a Comment