"The Canterbury Tales"

If you have not read Chaucers
The Canterbury Tales
in middle english
in the last few years
give it a try
the first time I did
was at Michigan State
sometime in the middle 1950s
it was a challenge then
and still is
it was the year I missed
the question "Who was Madame La Giocondo?"
on a final exam
never forgot it
I was just a young girl
from a small Ohio town
who liked poetry
and memorized all that she could
at seventy it still runs through
my head as easily as it did then
never getting old or tired
poets gifts to me
lasting a lifetime