Many a Bard’s Untimely Gifts

My heart is what it was before
A place that treasures from afar
To mirror goodness, with dreamy ambiguity
I have no sense, but alms of love

I am internal spring, in all four seasons
I water love and it turns south
A stomping ground for weary travelers
My heart is what it was before

I light the lamp and lay the cloth
For picnics with Beloveds, some of whom
Leave before they take a bite
I loved the beggars that I fed

Because I knew what it meant, to be hungry
I set a bowl before their step, and cherished
Them, before they found greener fields
I watched them prosper, and hint at leaving

I scattered crumbs for their departure
My heart is what it was before
The guarding source, the smile that saves
I know the coming and the going, intimately

Of seasons and lovers and friends
People seek plots to flourish forever
My heart was not built to last forever
It was made to scream to God, enjoy nature’s fruit.

The Duty of the Poet

I will take thee, as a Poet
To candidature for ethereal thrill
Subtle as the inner champers
Portions of visions, phrasing that

Dwell as full as an image – the red Rose
I will transport thee, as a Poet
To Cathedrals of fraught mortality
Joys of darling spontaneity

To risk all for the Scarlet Shelf
And usher in liberty for arcs of white
I will love thee, as a Poet
Until the house is full, that of the dream –

As conquering as love’s palaces
As secure, as divine intercourse
I will lead thee, as a Poet
As a carpenter on hands & knees

With opened palms, known to nobody –
As a stranger speaking of the elder tongues
I will speak of summer fields
And unheralded flowers dropped from memory

As a juggler turned wordsmith
As a prayer turned literary
I will take thee in, as a Poet
As the original artist of creative Vermilion

The pressed dust of symbolic projection
Of minds painted with brief beauty
That warrants pricelessness, with every line
These bards never awake from midnight’s trance.