The Purple Calf
pace Gelett Burgess
I tried to milk a purple calf,
Its moos were sweet and tuneful.
But all I got was half and half—
And half of half a spoonful.
J. Patrick Lewis‘s first book of poems—Gulls Hold Up the Sky (Laughing Fire Press)— appeared in October 2010. He has published over 130 verses in Light Quarterly, as well as poems in Gettysburg Review, New England Review, New Letters, Southern Humanities Review, new renaissance, Kansas Quarterly, Fine Madness, and many others. In May 2011 the Poetry Foundation named him the third U.S. Children’s Poet Laureate (2011-2013). He has published eighty-five children’s picture books to date with Knopf, Atheneum, Dial, Harcourt, Little, Brown, National Geographic, Creative Editions, Chronicle, Candlewick, Scholastic, and others.