A Donald Rumsfeld poem: A broken bone (from an interview he did five years ago)

By Jack Brummet, Poetry Editor

A Broken Bone [1]
By Donald Rumsfeld
[1] This poem is extracted from interviews with Bob Woodward in July, 2006.


Click on Rummy and President Ford to enlarge

If you don't set it,
Everything grows around the break
And you end up with that abnormality.

I used the phrase it's like teaching
A youngster how to ride a bicycle.
You run behind them with your hand in the seat.

At some point you've got to take some fingers off,
And then you've got to let go,
And they might fall.

You help pick them up and put them back on it.
But if you don't take your hand off,
You end up with a 40-year-old who can't ride a bike.

---o0o--