Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Some good poems write themselves. (But the transcription takes forever.)

10.25.2017 by David Murray // Leave a Comment

A very young writer without much yet to say, asks his younger sister, a ballet dancer with a leg injury, "Why aren't you limping?"

She replies, "Limping doesn't help."

This phrase nags at the writer for more than a quarter century—tickles him, pokes him, annoys him, chafes him, confounds him because it will not go away. Maybe this phrase comes to him once a month, unbidden and from various angles.

Then one day, when he is 48 and sitting in an armchair on a Sunday morning, he thinks of it again.

And this time, he realizes that his sister's simple answer to a simple question is also a three-word poem, and all he has to do is transcribe it and credit its author.

"Limping Doesn't Help," by Piper Murray.

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