Idealess? Really?

Ruth attends enrichment classes once a week. This week, they asked the students to write a poem. Ruth loves to write, so this would not typically be a problem. However, they gave them a form to follow that has fill-in-the-blanks. Ruth does not like being told what to write. At all.

So, she ended up writing a poem about how she couldn't write a poem. I thought it was pretty clever, so I'm sharing it here. I've underlined the prompts she was given.

Idealess

Whenever I'm asked to write a poem,
Whenever the teachers ask me to play with prose,
All night I think, searching my mind
A mind like an empty slate!

Late into the night I work feverishly
Why don't the words come easily?
Whenever I write a story, it's like a faucet turned all the way,
And they dance across the page.

By Robert Frost
By Emily Dickinson
By Shel Silverstein
By Robert Louis Stevenson
My deepest respect for them all.

Idealess, indeed.