My girl:
Was a pillar anchoring the tumbling world of childhood
Was a tonic against the bitterness of schooling
Was understanding to the outcast
Was strength to the timid
Was healing to the sick
Was quiet to the enraged
Was never ours
But evermore
Amen
March 21, 2007
Rhan's dan 
March 21, 2007 at 7:58 am
This was written for Candy Cane, one of the two best dogs in the world. She died last May. The style is borrowed from Nikki Giovanni’s poem “A Prayer for Nina”.
March 21, 2007 at 12:41 pm
Very nice indeed. Did you find it difficult to imitate Giovanni’s style, or did the poetic structure make it easier than imitating, say, Gibbon’s typically 18th century prose? How was the reading?
March 21, 2007 at 3:54 pm
The lecture/reading was phenomenal! Nikki is a real seanachai; she held all 500 of us in her stories for two hours, alternately fascinated and laughing uproariously. I highly recommend any of her books, and I myself am enjoying Acolytes right now.
Had I chosen one of her less patterned pieces, it would have been more difficult to imitate. (This poem took me less than five minutes.) Gibbon’s style is so self-conscious that imitating it borders on mockery. Nikki, on the other hand, has a very human beat, and her style is always built around her subject, so it’s difficult to repurpose. I wouldn’t want to change it, honestly.
March 22, 2007 at 9:35 pm
This is beautiful. Given Nikki Giovanni’s fondness for her pups (current one is named Kennedy), she would be pleased to know what you’ve done. At some point, we’ll tell her.