Nancy Scott McBride’s most recent poem to appear here was “To A Daughter Unknown” (July 2016)

It’s Just Poetry. It Won’t Bite.
By Nancy Scott McBride

When I was twelve, Mother read “Thanatopsis” to me, and
I had to pinch my arm to stay awake.
A couple of years later, I heard Daddy recite
“Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard,” and though
the first four lines are as lovely as anything written,
I got lost in its length.
Then when I was sixteen, my best friend sat me down,
picked up a book, said “listen to this,”
and read William Blake’s “The Tiger” to me.
You know the one I mean, right?
Tiger tiger burning bright, in the forests of the night.
The most popular poem in the English language, it
made an instant convert of me.
A thrill shot up my spine and started a fire in my head,
a fire that has died down from time to time but never gone out
and will still be burning, God willing,
the rest of my life.