A Facebook friend and classmate from Fairfax High School Class of 1965 just sent me a copy of our school's literary magazine Matrix that was published in the year we graduated. Wanda Brown Purdy and I and a bunch of other classmates were posting remembrances on a FB site for those who graduated from the original campus and Wanda mentioned a while back that she still had a box of stuff from high school and one of those things was this Matrix issue. She had the box stored and would dig it out and share since I had lost my copy long ago. When she found her box of treasures she let me know that she couldn't find my poem. I explained to her that I had used a nom de plume because my eighteen year old self thought the poem was dumb and I was okay with having it published but I didn't want anyone to know I had written it.. I used the name Margui Berger. Margui was for my most loved Aunt Margui, Margarette Watson, but the Matrix staff had spelled it Margee. Berger was for a boy I was dating at the time. She said then that she had already read the poem and she would send me her copy.
I was so happy I remembered that the poem started out "If I had a penny" but couldn't remember the rest of it and as a matter of fact I hadn't even submitted it to Matrix. It was written in Mrs. Jochem's English Class and she had submitted it. It's not half bad if I say so myself and I can see my love for rhyming. I'm a rhyming fool. Here it is:
A Penny
If I had a penny
I'd buy a little lace
To sew upon your collar
And frame your pretty face.
If I had a penny
I'd buy a flower's bloom
And put it in your parlor
To decorate your room.
If I had a penny
I'd buy a horse and carriage.
I'd bring it to your cottage door
And ask your hand in marriage.
Wanda Brown Purdy, thank you so, so, so, much. Love, Sandy
