Who, If Not For Poets?

It’s one a.m.; traffic is muffled on black velvet streets

Where want of slumber and the taunt of poetry competes

As soundless warriors of hunger and hope dredge the deep

To find amongst the masses, poets not yet fast asleep

The night is like an inkwell full of words waiting to be

They rankle in recesses vexed with ‘almost poetry’

Then let the dreamers dream their dreams in lands of sweet repose

No one can tame the Muse’s will as every poet knows

The rose is void of form or beauty until it breaks free

And word is like a storm of duty without poetry

For who, if not for poets, will potential poem find?

And who, if not for poets, can paint pictures on the wind?

Hark, hark, the dark is deeper after one a.m., my dear

The Quiet like a keeper of the poet’s smile and tear

Where words beguile in spite of common senses such as sleep

For who, if not for poets, will snare whispers from the deep?

© Janet Martin