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I HEARD MY CAT CRY
by April Halprin Wayland
I heard my cat cry
on far-away fences
“This dog you adopted—
have you come to your senses​?”

“If you give him away
I’ll forgive your offenses,”
I heard my cat cry
on far-away fences

(c) 2011  April Halprin Wayland, all rights reserved
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The story behind the poem:
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Last night I turned in another novel-in-poems.  Not to an editor this time, but to the eight students and my professor in my Master Class in Writing the Novel.
Deadlines are great and powerful…and I’m exhausted!

Of course my brain is mush.  I couldn’t come up with a topic for today’s first poem.

So I pulled out my old copy of The Scott, Foresman Anthology of Children’s Literature by Zena Sutherland and my long-time teacher and mentor, Myra Cohn Livingston looking for a poem for inspiration.  I wanted something short which I could imitate. I found the haunting, “I Heard a Bird” by Oliver Herford.
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As I was starting to play with it, I heard our cat, Snot, crying out my window.  She is still wary of our new lanky, licky, too-tall teen-aged dog, Eli.
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And the poem took shape. In a perfect world, I would not want the word “offenses” so close to the word “fences” at the end…they sound too much alike…but welcome to Poetry Month, where poems are raw and far from perfect!
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Can you write your own poem based on the structure and rhyme scheme of Herford’s poem? Share it with us! (Pop over to my post on TeachingAuthors to learn how to “write” a book spine book!)

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