Submitted to a poetry contest that desires a poem written spontaneously, not prewritten:

---

How to prove this comes from mind
And not ago so long ensigned:
Well, surely ‘t wouldn’t be prescribed
That some day soon it would be bribed,
For such serendipity
Has never once become of me;
Besides, how could I know –
In any past so long ago –
That it could e’er be asked of me
A poem feigning spontaneity?
I suppose the chiefest proof of all,
Even if meaning be banal,
Of this poem’s impromptitude
Is that it states that attitude,
Meaning, if ’twere written much years back
Would thus preclude future attack
O’ suspicion of its birth
For not seeing mother’s girth;
You did not see me quill in hand
Scribe this poem so unplanned,
But, please, believe me anyway,
Else I save it for another day.