The Poets calling

On the streets of an eastern capital people stopped and asked me,
“How do poets soar so high in the sky?”
I said it is now how. It is why. Why above they fly.
Are you intimately injured with pains and grief,
questioning your own beliefs, gritting your teeth?
Are you bosom close with wet and dry cheeks and
tasting your tears in your mouth?
Can you tell whether you are crying or laughing,
because there are times I don’t.
Their eyes looked at me in silence.
Have you sailed on the sea of tears watching all solid hope disappear.
Abandoned in the mists of isolation,
for salvation’s shore, have you prayed and peered.
Any shred of hope a commodity dear, losing it all in fear.
All around you, sea above and below desert,
where one false step and you could be dessert.
Every grain of salt in the wind sifting your soul without effort.
Despair a rising Beaufort.
Their feet shifted weight but that gave them no comfort.
The Saharan dust overhead in a wide grey spread.
The Sun seized the last few inches of shade,
unsheathing 32 degrees Celsius of exposed blade.
Is pain your constant companion, sometimes friend?
Do you allow pain to instruct you and sometimes make amends,
and did you experience missing love during the covid years!
A heart breaking weight too heavy to let go or bear.
Days in which missing love lost its way and, afterwards,
when missing love was found and, before love was damaged and,
after it was unsound.
In the windows of their souls I saw springs abound.
Maybe all who sailed in them were outward bound.
Maybe with all the tears linking
they would deep sea to deep blue sea sync and,
from earthly anchors delink.
One soul cried out, you poets walk on the brink.
I said there is only a knife edge between here and there,
the distance a blink faster than the eye can think,
creative genius and insane babbling,
the veil just a vapor, a misty bubbling.
We poets feel the pathway only as we step out,
weaving between desert and rivers, sea and land,
snow and summer, mountains and plains, cosmos and Earth,
life, death and the undead, spirit, soul and body,
walking through the fire that is life and living it.
Poets write with merit to right the wrongs and inspire,
no matter how deep the dive, through all the strife of living.
Poets walk and write the human experience in a spirit of joie de vivre,
on a sea of tears foaming waves of constant grief.
One brave voice uttered, the poet’s calling is beyond belief.
I sighed inwardly ending my inner repertoire. What a relief.
At last, was this soul a spark in the dark
who would one day make a mark and
soar high in the sky to the cosmic ark,
there to embark, a shining light aglow,
orbiting in a rainbow arc.

CI-49468852029 KNIGHT TRUELOVE POEMS