Poor poetry,
jeered and ridiculed,
discarded to bins
half-priced,
banished
to basement boxes,
more paper
than lines of ink.
Yet I will never abandon you:
still endeared to me
for your rhymes,
your single line
that sears:
the chosen, road less traveled,
less read and far less honoured
than our ghost-wrought
starlet novels,
our fibbing
celebrity bios,
our how-to
do-it-yourselves,
our books with many pictures.
On dust-rich shelves
you sit, neglected,
the plump girl
at the dance,
watching others be held
and heard ...
but when
you rise to speak,
in those instants
the world, yes, listens,
it's something more remembered
than what's currently number 1:
a comparison
to summer's
day,
from failing hands,
a torch,
a set of
shoreline footprints
and the wonder
that we're carried.
