What Poets Teach

One said that a false step is never ever taken back,

While one said I would begin to love life as I grew older,

One said to take the wheel in a world of piercing pitch black,

One spoke of how they loved the seasons as the days grew colder.

One promises a maiden with a golden torch whose flame

That Illuminates the way on the path that less people take

Would be waiting with three witches and a cauldron in a cave

Where we mourn the civil divider known as good old “Honest Abe”.

One said I would have the world if I could accept it and face it,

One said the burden was a lie, and that Kipling misplaced it

One wielded a vorpal blade in hand, and with it sliced through and through

The pollution of the footsteps that served under red, white and blue.

One asked for a guide in Adversity, so we could know ourselves,

One asked a favor from the man with jobs on every shelf,

One told of six who bore no sight, who each were wrong yet all were right,

One puts forth admiration like a summer sun’s daylight.

The one who knows of no one who does mischief in the house,

Knows a disobedient fish is bound to be swimming about

To where twenty logs cross stream and ground, as thrones for twenty froggies

Who hop away when winter comes, bringing a life most jolly.

One said nothing is ever right for the folks along Complaining Street,

One said a wretch would be in Paradise if he could only breathe,

These poems stand up to time, the words that many have yet to see,

Can be told in twenty-four lines of what they have taught me.

 

*****

Line reference

  1. Ode to a Favorite Cat
  2. The Three Warnings
  3. Invictus
  4. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
  5. The New Colossus
  6. The Road Not Taken
  7. Witches’ Brew
  8. O Captain My Captain
  9. If
  10. The Black Man’s Burden
  11. Jabberwocky
  12. The Star Spangled Banner 3rd Stanza
  13. Hymn to Adversity
  14. The Busy Man
  15. The Blind Men and the Elephant
  16. Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day
  17. Mr. Nobody
  18. The Little Fish That Would Not Listen To Its Mother
  19. Twenty Froggies
  20. Blow, Blow thou winter wind
  21. The Grumble Family
  22. Ode on the pleasure arising from Vicissitude

 

 

This poem is about: 
Me
Poetry Terms Demonstrated: 

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