Puff, the Magic Dragon, has been my friend for more than 50 years.  It was in the spring of 1959 that I wrote the poem that became the song Puff, the Magic Dragon.  I was a freshman at Cornell.  I had been at the library at Willard Straight Hall, the Student Union building, and I’d read a sentimental poem about a dragon by Ogden Nash.  As I walked down State Street to the apartment of Peter Yarrow – who became the “Peter” of Peter, Paul and Mary, and who set my poem to music – I thought to myself, “I can do better than Ogden Nash’s poem about a dragon.”  Maybe I did.