Free Never Blame the Umpire by Gene Fehler

bike,
    To ride across recess, to ride down the hall,
    To ride in my classroom and laugh at them all.
    They are sitting there workingfor teachers who yell
    From the morning announcementstil the day’s final bell.
    My classmates just sit there, all writing a poem,
    So I zoom out the door and I ride my bike home.
    Sally, Eating a Bar of
    Chocolate in Sunday School
    The chocolate bar she tried to eat
    Had melted in the summer heat.
    The chocolate dripped off Sally’s nose
    And landed on her best church clothes.
    Sally’s favorite yellow dress
    Was now a brown and gooey mess.
    Some chocolate fell with a kerplop
    And formed a heart-shaped chocolate drop
    On one of Sally’s new, white shoes.
    The moral’s this: if you should choose
    To ever eat a chocolate bar,
    Remember when and where you are.
     
    I actually wrote that last one for Allison, but I changed her name because Mr. Gallagher said we shouldn’t use the names of real people in our poems, because it might embarrass them or make them feel bad (even though the poem isn’t true). It could have happened, though. Allison actually was eating a candy bar one day before Sunday School. She had on a really pretty dress. I kept thinking, “I hope she’s careful not to get chocolate on her dress.” She didn’t, but she could have.
    Mr. Gallagher told us more than once, “Poemsaren’t always ‘what is.’ Most of the time they’re ‘what might be,’ or ‘what could be.’”
    Allison’s the last one in our class to read. I love her poems. I think they say a lot about the kind of person she is. Whether she’s writing serious poems or silly ones, most of them are about God or Jesus or church or prayer.
    She starts out with “God, Sticking Up For My Brother.”
     
I saw God sitting in a tree.
    “It’s only an owl,” my brother said.
    “Just listen to the sound.”
    It sure sounded like God to me.
    Then in the middle of the night
    I awoke to see God
    in the shadows near my window.
    “Why,” I asked Him, “aren’t you
    still in the tree where I saw you
    when I was in the yard with my brother?”
    “I wasn’t in that tree,” God told me.
    “That was an owl. Even brothers,”
    God said, “are not wrong all the time.”
     
    Her next one is “Samson.” Allison sure knows more about the Bible than I do.
     
Talk about being hoodwinked! He never did
    see the truth until that final moment, chained
    like a wild animal to be spit on by Philistines.
    God could have given up on him; no one
    would have blamed Him, gullible and ungodly
    as Samson was, murderer of thirty men at Ashkelon,
    of a thousand at Lehi. The woman of Timnath and
    Delilah both saw the human Samson, Samson the weak.
    But Samson, at the end, learned in time that prayer,
    not hair, was the source of miraculous strength.
     
    Allison reads one of her silly poems next. And it has nothing to do with religion.
     
A Cuddly Pet
    Mom asked what I wanted for Christmas. She said,
    “I’ll try as hard as I can to get it.
    I told her that pandas are furry and cuddly
    And I’d like to have one so I can pet it.
    There were none to be found, so Mom brought me home
    A substitute pet, and she warned, “Don’t upset it.”
    The pet that she brought me, a fat porcupine,
    Was all right, I guess. But cuddle? Forget it.
     
    “My last poem,” Allison says, “is one titled ‘A Child Knows God.’” She smiles out at the audience. She doesn’t seem nervous or self-conscious at all. She says, “I thought back to when I was real little and first discovered how good God is. I didn’t know anything about poetry then, but I think this is what I would have written if I had. It’s exactly how I felt. It’s how I still feel.”
    She starts to read.
     
God made the grass; God made each tree.
    God gave me eyes so I can see
    The grass he made and see the shade
    That comforts me.
     
    The way her face glows lets everyone know how much she loves God. She’s not pretending, the way some people do. I wish I could feel