The Secret
21 Apr, 2012
A young girl
tells her grandfather
she’s learning to write.
She explains
the yellow pencils
and blue lined paper
She tells him she’s learned
how to write her name.
“Well that’s magnificent!”
he exclaims,
“I’d love to read your handwriting.
Will you write something for me?”
She shakes her head,
“But Grandpa,
you can’t read it yet,
“I’m just practicing.”
Her grandfather smiles
and leans down to whisper
gravelly grinning decades next to her face
“My dear,
that is the great secret.
Even when you get good
at handwriting, or anything else,
even when you grow up
and get big like your parents,
even when you’re old like me,
every shoelace
and every signature
is still
just
practice.
Let me show you…”
he explains,
wrapping his fingers
around the yellow Ticonderoga
#2
“We can practice
together.”
About the author
Ed Makowski
Ed Makowski is a poet/writer/artist/radio personality/gatherer of stories and lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. While working as Eddie Kilowatt he released two poetry books, Manifest Density and Carrying a Knife in to the Gunfight. Density was included in Best New Poetry of 2006 and Gunfight received the Carma Writer’s Award. Both were released on his indy press Full Contact Publishing. Ed is also a regular contributor of interviews to Lake Effect on Milwaukee’s NPR station 89.7 WUWM. This is also where he curates The Lunch Counter storytelling series. Through April the Pfister Hotel is home to The Lunch Counter. Ed will serve as the Pfister Narrator through April 2012. Ed is also working on a few different poetry books, each taking overtly different directions; dialogue poems, history poems, longer storytelling poems. Between writing projects and working Ed likes to ride motorcycles and backpack into the middle of nowhere.
Hey Ed,
Glad to see that you are doing so well with your writing. I can still remember you with spiral notebook full of writing in high school. Take care
Bridget
Thanks Bridget, great to hear from you! I hope you and the whole brood are doing very well.