For VerseLove today on Ethical ELA, host Jennifer Guyor Jowett extends this invitation to participants: Pick any letter from the alphabet. Think about its shape, its function, how else it might be heard or understood. Play with variations. See what might be discovered. 

Welp… I find I’ve gotta go with this.

Ode to F

Let’s face it:

F is not the most alluring
letter of the alphabet.

It indicates failure.

It stands for an expletive.

Technically, it’s fricative,
a sound made by forcing
air through a narrow channel,
in this case, by placing the
teeth on the lower lip

looking rather like
trepidation

or, rather,
fearfulness.

Seems a humble
(if not humiliated)
letter
not to mention
nearly impossible
for a young child
to write
in its capital cursive form:
France, for example,
looks like Trance.

But
let’s face it:

F happens to be
a banner letter.
Case in point:
when a small child
has to turn her
first name initial
into an object
for a class assignment
and the girl beside her
is drawing E as
the gorgeous wing
of a bird in flight
the F girl’s got nothing
until she finally thinks
of a flagpole.

A universal
symbol of
freedom

and where would we be
without that?

It stands nobly
there in JFK and RFK

not to mention
twice ceaselessly
in F. Scott Fitzgerald.

A banner letter,
indeed

woven into the very
fabric of our existence…
how could we function
without

Fibonacci sequence
flora and fauna
forests
fish
family

or finches?

Or FRIDAY
or friends?

Or fearlessness.

Or faith.

Stand tall
and proud, 
oh F,
waving your
two little fronds
in the wind
forever.

Fly on.

“Decorated Capital Letter F“.Jakob Frey, Swiss, active Italy, 1681 – 1752. CC0 1.0.
Public domain, Smithsonian.