A Love Poem for Poets

THE POETS

Appearing in Creative Colloquy, April 7, 2017

Written after attending a lecture by Professor Robert Hass, the former U.S. poet laureate.

We mouth the words, we chant, we rise and fall in rhythm as we drink the verse together.

Our tongues in chorus curl, unfurl

wrapping measures in our mouth humming life back into language.

We know the necessary pause and patiently delay,

then begin again.

Together, we keep pace until the end.

Sated weariness sets in as the meaning of the world is gleaned in our shared moment of expression,

yet—

something still unspoken, we all sense, remains unknown.

One day we will follow where the poets went

alone.