Thanking Dr. Seuss

Some get hooked on poetry
By reading Robert Frost
Or Dickinson or Poe
Or others whom their paths have crossed.

In college I read Coleridge,
Byron, Shelley,Whitman, Pound,
T.S. Eliot and Wordsworth,
All in Norton’s, nicely bound.

But in truth, what got me started
Was less lofty, though enticing –
More like turning from the cake
So I could focus on the icing.

For my intro into rhyming
(If you don’t count Mother Goose),
Were the silly stories written
By that master, Dr. Seuss.

I was lifted and delighted
By each word upon each page;
Though he also drew the pictures,
It was language that engaged.

Every rhyme and all the rhythm
Seeped by suction to my veins
And they flowed into the depths
Where the important stuff remains.

So to Dr. Seuss I owe a debt.
He changed the way I’m wired
And I wonder if he realized
All the poets he inspired.