What if poets had been in a hurry to go eat? Or make a tee time? Or pick up a sick kid from elementary school? How might their verse have been worse?

STOPPING BY WOODS ON A HURRIED EVENING

Whose woods these are I think I know

His house is in the village though

He will not mind me stopping by

If I bring whiskey, and the money I owe.

He might just want to drink hot joe!

(I sure could use a biscuit, bro.)

---

DIVERGING ROADS THAT DIVERGED

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, I turned around and went on home.

I’ve never been good at making decisions.

I don’t think.

But I could be wrong.

---

THEY NAMED HIM ‘MINEVER’?

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,

Was almost named Scorn Jr.

---

TAKE ME OUT FOR A HOTDOG

Take me out to the ballgame

Take me out to the crowd

On second thought, I’m already here

And it’s the seventh inning.

So never mind.

---

THE THEME FROM EVERREADY

Out out brief candle!

Curse against the dying of the light!

Do not go quietly into that good night.

Curse the dying of th…

Wait!, and Hark!, even.

I just need to replace the batteries;

For a second there I thought I was dying! –

Joke’s on me!

---

WORLD’S SHORTEST POEM

Roses are

---

ODE TO BELK

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day;

But the sale at Belk

Ends Thursday

So we really should hurry.

Grab you keys and the checkbook.

---

RENTER’S WOE

Come live with me and be my love

And we will all the pleasures prove

Or I could come and live with you

If you will only help me move.

Do you own a truck?

---

MAKING THE GRADE?

Teacher’s lament:

To B, or not to B.

That is the question,

Since he really made a C.

---

IT ALL COMES BACK TO DAIRY

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,

Suddenly there came a growling, from the pit of my embowling

And it sent me quickly howling toward the ’frigerator door.

“Just a sandwich, nothing more.”

But I caved, went to the store,

And eat Blue Bell — evermore.

-30-

Happy Regional Finals Weekend! Designated Writers will share some of its favorite March Madness Memories this week in hopes they will cause you to think of yours or remember where you were or how you felt during these. For the first one, we go to March 22, 1987 and Riverfront Coliseum on Pete Rose Way in Cincinnati.

The game was for the final spot in the 1987 Final Four in New Orleans.

It was the Midwest Regional Finals: LSU had beaten DePaul by five and Indiana had beaten Duke by six. Duke was coached by 40-year-old Mike Krzyzewski, who had gotten the job in 1980 and was building the team into a power. Coach K played for Bobby Knight when both were at Army, a big story that week back in 1987.

Indiana was a 1 seed, LSU a 10. But the Hoosiers trailed by 12 in the second half and by nine with less than five minutes left.

I was on press row, sitting level with the time line across from the LSU bench, and had a good view of a classic Knight tirade. He got a technical and pounded the scorer’s table with his fist in front of a priest, who I believe was the Notre Dame president and a member of the NCAA committee. (JJ, Catholic and a lover of the Fighting Irish, will know.) That resulted in a $10,000 fine for the university and a reprimand for Knight. A funny thing is that a black telephone was on the scorer’s table — I don’t know why; bullpen phone? — and Knight’s fish-pound knocked the receiver off the hook and onto the table, something that could not happen today. Good visual then, though.

LSU lost it with some brain cramps late, a missed free throw, a bank shot off a Hossier air ball with seven seconds left, and a miss at the buzzer by Nikita Wilson, who’d scored 20 for the Tigers. Great game. Everybody played hard. Indiana would go on to win the national championship. JJ covered the finals live and will tell you more about that later this week. (DESIGNATED CORRECTION/CLARIFICATION: JJ just told me he will NOT tell you more about the 1987 Finals this week or ever because he didn’t cover it; DUOOH! Instead, our now-absent friends Kent Heitholt (The Times) and Jerry Byrd (Shreveport Journal) covered that game, when Indiana’s Keith Smart hit the game-winner late. But JJ will tell you about a couple of other Finals he witnessed live.)

But the Big Moment in that Indiana-LSU game, the March Madness Moment, was when a backup guard named Joe Hillman spelled All-American Steve Alford, who scored 20 — 18 in the first half before LSU went to a box-and-one and put Bernard Woodside on him. Hillman stole a pass, scored, was fouled by Woodside — his fifth — and made the free throw to make the score 75-71 LSU with less than four minutes to play.

Turned out to be the biggest play of the game, as Knight and everyone else who watched the game agreed afterward. Indiana would score six more points, LSU one.

The thing is, Hillman played one minute. Every second counts in championship basketball.

You never know.

-30-