It Was A Phrase
by John F McMullen
It was in 2006 That I saw
this wonderful line in a
column in a motorcycle
magazine*:
The mind writes checks that
the body can’t cash”.
Not as memorable perhaps
as:
Call Me Ishmael
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times
the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad so I had one more for dessert
Jackie Robinson is a credit to his race – the human race
all lines that moved me
(from Herman Melville, Charles Dickens, Kris Kristofferson, Dick Young)
but it grabbed me … and held me … and still holds me
it made me a poet
It wouldn’t have happened
if
I hadn’t first
mistakenly picked up
a book in Barnes & Nobel
by Charles Bukowski
and read my first poem in
since graduating from college
forty years before
But it took reading this line
to get me to write my first
poem Cashing A Check
and then at the advice
of a friend
entering it in a contest
and winning third prize
It was not really a big deal
published on the web
one-year subscription to Poets&Writers magazine
a twenty-five dollar prize
but it was more than enough
to get me completely hooked
Now
fifteen years later
hundreds of poems published
a first book (entitled Cashing A Check) .. and eight more
Poet Laureate of a Westchester Town
and I owe it all to chance encounters
with Bukowski and Rasor
Life is funny
and you can use that line
in your poem
*”Milestones” by Robert Rasor, American Motorcyclist; March 2006
Copyright 2021 John F. McMullen
