Is poetry important?
Is poetry important?
Tell me – do you breathe air? Or if not air, do you breathe at all?
Do you carry within you the in and out, in and out rhyme
of a life still whispering small sounds keeping time?
Do you hold within you the cadence of sighs,
turning your very nostrils into music-making machines
and your lungs a chorus of singers
meting out your metered ties to existence?
Then I would say that poetry is important.
Is poetry important?
Tell me – do you push and pump a beat.beat.beat.
in an iambic muscle that measures your life
in a glorious kind of pentameter?
Have you ever fallen into step
or tapped your fingers to a pulsing summat
caught inside your head?
Do you walk a certain way over sidewalk cracks?
Then poetry is important.
Is poetry important?
Tell me – do you ever look in a mirror?
Or wish it reflected a little something more?
Do you value possibility?
Do you value truth?
Do you ever yearn for a beautiful lie?
Or wish for something to make you cry?
Do you find assurance in a newborn’s breath?
Then poetry has not yet found its death.
Is poetry important?
I’d hazard yes.
Quill Aquiver 