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
- Ode to a Favorite Cat
- The Three Warnings
- Invictus
- Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
- The New Colossus
- The Road Not Taken
- Witches’ Brew
- O Captain My Captain
- If
- The Black Man’s Burden
- Jabberwocky
- The Star Spangled Banner 3rd Stanza
- Hymn to Adversity
- The Busy Man
- The Blind Men and the Elephant
- Shall I Compare Thee To A Summer’s Day
- Mr. Nobody
- The Little Fish That Would Not Listen To Its Mother
- Twenty Froggies
- Blow, Blow thou winter wind
- The Grumble Family
- Ode on the pleasure arising from Vicissitude