Poetry is one of my oldest friends. Rhyme, rhythm, meter, and vocabulary have supported me since I was a toddler.

An interest in illustrated poetry books by Dr Seuss and Shel Silverstein later transformed into an attraction to Edgar Allan Poe. The woes of Poe were soon followed by love poems written to my middle school classmates.

In high school, I wrote horrifically bad rap lyrics. I also made attempts at heartfelt verses to family on birthdays and holidays. A sonnet I crafted made it to the school magazine, and I recited it at a countywide event.

By my final year of college, I was still writing predominantly bad raps but never lost my habit for literary poetry. Workshops in the English department structured all four years. When I wore a tasseled cap and billowing gown across stage, I was a lyricist, storyteller, and poet.

In every year since graduation, I’ve written hundreds of individual poems—mainly sonnets, haikus, and boxfuls of free verse. Poetry and I have charted the waters of health, illness, legacy, grief, nature, dreams, and occasionally, let a single line brew for years before tasting it.

Poetry is ancient. Yet no matter poetry’s other friends and followers, we have a special and specific connection private to the two of us.

Eventually, artificial intelligence will outwrite us, much like computers unseat chess masters. For now, I’m taking a stroll with poetry down a forested path by a pond. What’s ahead is just a guess, and that’s alright with me. Poetry will keep me company.