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Math Problem

The first poem I can remember
writing I called “Math.”  I wrote
it in fourth grade for an assignment
by Ms. Cleta Hoffman.  It was

a sonnet, and this is how it started:
“Math is hard.  Very hard/Addition,
Subtraction, Division./For math, my
teacher is my guard, she gives me

supervision.”  I believe the second
stanza goes: “One, two, three, four/
union, multiple, quotient.”  But that
is all I remember of it.  My fifth grade

teacher entered it into a statewide 

contest and it “won” – meaning it 

was published in a “real magazine,”
along with, no doubt, every other

poetic entry by elementary schoolkids
in Arkansas.  I remember getting
to see the publication but not
getting to keep it (it cost a sum,

I can’t remember how much,
hard-copy literary journals have
to make ends meet somehow).
It was a silly little poem, but

given that out from it sprung
a lifetime of them, I’ve for
many years wanted to get
my hands on it.  Just the

poem would be fine.  I
doubt I’ll ever have the
opportunity.  But more
than anything, this is a

note of massive gratitude
to Ms. Hoffman and Ms.
Mendenhall, teachers of
fourth and fifth grade

in Charleston Elementary,
both of whom went well
above and beyond just to
see that I got encourage

ment, if not general
recognition.  That is a
gift that grows more
profound to me the

further away I get from
the time I wrote a silly
rhyming sonnet that
I called “Math.”