My First Poem

Sitting in the sun on the dry
grass behind the soccer field
near the copse of trees that
conceal the hole in the fence
leading to the Terry Fox Run,

watching the popular girls
in their Abercrombie tees
hanging upside down from
the New Climber that replaced
the splintering old junglegym,

I am reading my first poem aloud:
it pulls itself forward like an inchworm
agonizingly slow, stuttering over itself,
redundant, imprecise, and cliché,
more of a paragraph than a poem —

But I am shining, proud as peaches,
blushing to hear what my friend thinks of it:
my poem, written during math class, read
during recess, about a flower under a jar
and the first time she feels the sun.