"Johnnie's Poem"
By Alden Nowlan

Look! I've written a poem!
Johnnie says
and hands it to me
         and it's about
         his grandfather dying
         last summer, and me
         in the hospital
and I want to cry,
don't you see, because it doesn't matter
if it's not very good:
         what matters is he knows
and it was me, his father, who told him
         you write poems about what
         you feel deepest and hardest.