What Is A Poet? Poem by Liilia Talts Morrison

The world is filled with striving souls
their earthly walk to grace
with friends and food and shelter too
and leave a mark or trace
to be remembered by their kin
and maybe spread across
the lintels of their cottage doors
their names in tomes emboss

A poet does not yearn or seek
to strive or feather nests
his only tools are words and dreams
he shudders at hard tests
his road is but a weed strewn field
without a human print
a thicket known to tiny bugs
wild leaves of rue and mint

His friends are meadowlarks and ducks
food gleaned from bushes, trees
his shelter is a clump of weeds
walled off from nightly breeze
At times a friendly country wife
will hand him fresh baked bread
or offer a warm hearth at night
and pillow for his head

It matters not if his few rhymes
can even reach a pen
or paper to be written down
and never seen of men
and even if someone has heard
and jotted down each line
the day may come or it may not
when they are deemed sublime

For every poet and his words
are written in a book
that none on earth has ever seen
nor would they dare to look
nor have they seen an endless source
providing food and friends
and shelter more secure than stone
that to all poets sends

The world is filled with striving souls
their earthly walk to grace
with friends and food and shelter too
and leave a mark or trace
to be remembered by their kin
and maybe spread across
the lintels of their cottage doors
their names in tomes emboss.