To a New Librarian Who Thinks I Don’t Write Poetry

Poets come in many shapes
Tall, lanky girls dressed in drapes;
Moon-round ladies who rhyme;
Well-worn gents wearing chaps;
And sexy ladies who sit on laps
Writing sonnets, and love poems,
And the one poem everyone
Reads out at funerals.
There are white-haired poets who farm;
Curly-haired poets who alarm
The ladies, and howl at the moon.
Poets who dance, and poets who can’t;
And poets who stand at the podium and rant;
Poets who use no capital letters;
And poets who write around the edges of the page.
I knew a poet once who wrote
Between the lines on his palm
Though today he’d probably write
On a palm-pilot instead.
Why do you think I don’t write poetry?
Am I the wrong shape, the wrong age,
The wrong size, the wrong gender,
Or have you just not gotten down to the Ys yet?