A Tiger Tale: A Tale About A Tiger's Tail

In late 1981, I was awakened at about 2:00 a.m. with the first half of this little poem chasing itself around in my mind. I tried to ignore it and go back to sleep, but it wouldn't go away. I finally got up, found a scrap of paper and a pencil, wrote down what I had been given, and went back to sleep. When I woke up later that morning, the rest of the poem was waiting for me to write down.

I have made many attempts to write poems over the years, beginning in high school. Most ranged from amateurish to pathetic. This was the first time something had just come to me. It has remained part of my "not worth publishing" collection until now. But I kept trying, and now, I have 13 published books. When you can escape into the written word, it trains your imagination to think beyond what you see. Only by reading can you go anywhere you want to go, be anything you want to be, and do anything you want to do.