Disclaimer –

Derek's work has been registered at the U.S. Library of Congress, so it would be a terrible financial idea to plagiarize or use any of the material found on this website for your own purposes. Nevertheless, enjoy the writing!

The Eager Little Girl



(1996)

The eager little girl left home around ten after ten,
Following a beaten path that led her to the glen.
She stood and stared intently, never uttering a word,
At the endless pit from all those stories she had heard.

She stood before the massive hole; amazement filled her eyes.
This spectacle was so immense; it caught her by surprise,
But nonetheless her sense of duty would not let her quit.
She had to do what she came for: to fill the bottomless pit.

The girl picked up a rock that was contentedly on the ground.
She hurled it with a puerile hope that it would make a sound.
When silence had responded to her bold experiment,
She understood that her results would equal her effort spent.

Determination gripped her by her heart and by her hands;
She threw in nearly everything as if following commands.
She threw in piles of mulch and followed that with Douglas firs;
She threw in local badgers with their parasitic burrs.

She threw in all the contents of the pockets of her coat;
She threw in all those letters to Napoleon she wrote.
With sweat now flowing from her brow, not stopping ‘till her toes,
The tired eager little girl soon threw away her clothes.

She started digging in the mud until her shoulders hurt.
She figured she would fill the endless pit with simple dirt.
Though tired and bare and hungry and sore in every limb,
The girl would not stop until the pit was filled up to the brim.

But every time the girl cast something else into the hole,
She realized she was no closer to finishing her goal.
Because the endless pit was not becoming very filled,
The dreaded fear of failure in the little girl did build.


An act of desperation soon approached the young girl’s mind.
She had to fill the pit but also leave her fears behind.
So, trying to destroy two homes with only one high tide,
The tired eager little girl threw her fears inside.

Low and behold, the little girl spied something quite a sight.
A sudden, brash excitement set her twinkling eyes alight.
For every fear she tossed in, the pit seemed to sympathize
And the depths of the once bottomless pit began to rise.

She continued hurling every fear this quest had caused,
But soon a revelation struck; reluctantly, she paused;
For every fear she cast away filled the pit like a cup,
It also caused cessation of the fears that had built up.

This situation she was in was paradoxical,
She helped her cause, but still the pit had not been rendered full.
She’d come so far, but somehow still, she thought herself inept.
The tired, achy, naked, eager, little girl just wept.

Frustrated and now shivering, the girl became enraged,
There had to be a victor in this battle she had waged.
The girl was so exhausted and her body numbly sore;
The pit had won the battle but it would not win the war.

So fervently she grabbed the Earth with which she’d fill the void,
She’d had enough of disappointment, she would not get annoyed;
And with the strength of fifty girls, she dug relentlessly
Until no remnants of the endless pit were left to see.

Now many years have lived and died since her quest was complete,
So much folklore has arisen about her awesome feat.
Stories circled of a girl with superhuman powers
And yet this hero, old and gray, stayed hidden in her bowers.

And if you ask this woman to tell of her bold tale,
No words will she deliver, at speech she’ll seem to fail.
For, though she filled the endless pit, so deep and round and wide,
Right next to this, there now remains another pit beside.