Who Knows? Poem by Doug Lane

Maybe the most brilliant poet
who ever lived
died with all
her poems
unpublished,
unread
by anyone
but her.

Maybe she died
in a mass grave
outside of town,
her poems hidden
in a small sheaf
under
her bloodsoaked
dress.

And maybe her poems
are no longer legible,
have blended in
with the bloody Earth,
have surrendered
their secrets
to the earthworms,
the moles,
the rain,
the sky.

Maybe these poems
have washed down
gulleys
to the river
to the sea,
invisible, inaudible,
to passing fish.

The poet
and her poems
lost forever
to those
who rate
poets
and their poems
on a scale
from one
to one in a billion.