It cannot see the shadows
in the valley
nor the wind
that today
swayed the ponderosa pine
yet I have discovered
the value of my words
to the world
as valuable as any
written by a computer
programmed to write
And what of the monkeys
given typewriters
who spend their days
in attempts to write Shakespeare
so am I no better than
those self-same monkeys
stifled by the weaknesses
of today's language
My expectation is a lie
I tell to me
the thought that I might write
one poem that could remember
me to a future world
or that my death might have the means
to net a few lines in the obituaries
of faraway newspapers
their readers amazed they never heard
of my efforts or books
enough to make them feel
they had never accomplished
even the smallest recognition
of a world in the throes of ignorance
So I've charmed these thoughts
from the shadows of a windy day
and the movement
of unimportant evergreens
that gives me the truth
of my exhalations
that they are not enough
to move any tree
in the slightest direction
and to have this manifest
fall as if I have made a fault
that cannot shake the world
Oh, a friend might send a note
to assure me that a line I write
has bent their conscious path
and caused a shift to new directions
their words to heal my lonesome wounds
and dreamy sores upon the invisible skin
I craft upon my burdened exterior
where those words become a salve
expected to seal the canyons
on the surface of my ballooned ego
what would be better
than the silence I know
the compliment of the ages
for poets
For few know that Lincoln wrote poems
these simplest expressions of humanity
the leavings on a empty plate
where they are passed to the cat
to lick clean and have as much impact
and only I can free myself
from the encroachment of a solid world
where such pronouncements
can no longer penetrate
the largest exhale though
the spiked leaves of an evergreen
on a windy day
bitch bitch bitch
Copyright © 2011 by Barry G Wick
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