Thursday, June 21, 2012

The Struggle



THREE WORD WEDNESDAY
asks us to use the words in blue

THE STRUGGLE

Pity the poor little fellow and his struggle to learn to read!
It's not a natural activity! It's very hard indeed!
No part of the brain is allocated to looking at squiggles on a page
And making some sort of sense of them! Yet we reach a certain stage
When society insists those squiggles have some sort tale to tell.
We must learn to decipher them and we must do it well.
A fog descends upon our brain; so many words and letters!
And all of them understood and read by our elders and our betters!
Is there no end to the number? Words seem to go on for ever!
And we are only five years old and not really all that clever.
Our teacher is kind and lenient; she doesn't mind our mistakes.
But oh what a lot of effort the whole darned business takes!
*
Then, just as we learn that 'hav' is right, we're driven round the bend
By a teacher saying 'Sorry, dear; there's a silent E on the end!'
*
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MASQUERADE

A shadow on a whitewashed wall
Yet one that looks so real,
That, to distingush it from the fronds,
One would need to feel
The fleshiness of the real thing,
The hard stone of the fraud,
Each one moving in the breeze
Like a serrated sword.

*

9 comments:

Sheilagh Lee said...

I love the Struggle.
and your next one Masquerade as well. Well done

Mojo Writin said...

The Struggle made me laugh, especially as an ex-primary school teacher. Poor kids, it must seem never-ending! Fortunately, for me, it never was and I couldn't stop devouring words... Sadly, I still can't spell them *grin*

Mary said...

Visiting from Poetry Pantry. Yes, spelling rules are so inconsistent, aren't they? Fore, four, or for -- that is the question!

Bruce Miller said...

Dropping by from Poets United to read your fun and delightful "lerning to spel" poem. Just great!

Anonymous said...

Spelling rules are bad, but don't even get me started about the crazy rules of grammar! :-)

Sherry Blue Sky said...

That's a cute poem about learning to read, and all of those silent letters, and words spelled different ways.....oh my!

Kodjo Deynoo said...

To see the frustration in the eye of a 5year old, is to have great empathy

Kerry O'Connor said...

English is the very devil of a language to learn! Your humorous verse gave me a chuckle.

I like your observation about the palm fronds and their shadows - very well-expressed.

PhotoDiction said...

Love "the struggle" and the disillusionment around the silent 'e'. Reading can be so harsh sometimes :)