When I was 6 or so I wrote my first poem. I had been hearing poetry for awhile and had finally learned to write and I aspired then with passion to be a ballerina. I composed lines 1-4 of this piece and I stole the second stanza:

I am a ballerina
As dainty as can be
And when I act out in a play
I go down one two three

When at night I go to bed
I look up in the sky
And what do I see?
The moon and the stars looking down at me.

I got away with it. I showed my poem to my parents and my teacher and I was praised. In fact the praise was effusive. I think now that I may have wanted to come clean, to confess my theft, but who wants to disappoint parents and teachers at that age? They seemed so happy with the poem, their eyes shining and their smiles big; who wants to make them switch to worry-face?

Yes, I got away with it. But it was not worth anything. I couldn’t put their praise in the place that made me feel good. Instead it lodged somewhere in me and made me feel a little smudgy.

I never forgot the poem as you see. And every time I recite it I confess that I didn’t write the second part. But I have searched a little and I can’t find who did write it. The people I confess to look at me like they don’t remember it either.

The reason I’m recalling this lesson now – how copying another person’s work may get you some praise but the praise won’t feel good – is I just told the story to a new friend, and so I looked at the two parts of the poem. And I realized something I never noted before:

The second part sucks. The first part is better. Really: I never should have bothered to steal.