Welcome back to the Daily Poem here in the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today is December 5th, 2019, which means that it is my son Jeremiah's seventh birthday today.

I have two poems that I'm going to read in honor of him today. Before I do that, though,

I want to remind you, as I did, once already this week about our competition for our younger

listeners, remember to draw a picture or paint a picture or in some way create an illustration

of or inspired by the Ogden Nash poem, The Tale of Custer the Dragon. Remember, you can enter

by posting your submission on social media with the hashtag TDP Ballad, as in the Daily

Poem Ballad. So hashtag TDP Ballad. And the deadline for that is December 31st, so the last day of this year.

That brings me to today's poems.

Jeremiah, who, as I said, is his birthday today.

He is a violinist.

He loves playing his violin, and we love listening to him.

So we've got two poems that are about the violin.

One serious, one humorous.

And I'm going to begin with the one that's humorous,

which is by Bruce Lansky, an American poet who does a lot of things,

bringing poetry to children.

And this is a humorous poem that in no way describes the way we feel

by listening to Jeremiah play the violin.

It goes like this.

My mom brought home a violin so I could learn to play.

She told me, if I practiced hard, I'd play it well someday.

...