Braving Beauty (with a pen)

Malcolm Guite expresses perfectly in the video and poem above what many of us feel...

Sometimes the poet feels inept to walk where former poets stepped

To paint with meager ink and pen the beauty of life’s loves again

For how, when masters of the art have stunned the bottom of the heart

Can I be brave enough to try to pen the prose of earth and sky

But even as I contemplate the reasons I should deviate

From trampled paths of profound speech I cannot quell the urge to reach

Toward what begs to be retold to we not here in days of old

Where perhaps one with fledgling wings will feel the joy a poem brings

And fear will hear hope whisper ‘try’ as trust propels her to the sky

Where all of this would never be without the bliss of poetry

To cheer the way not bound to sod that ultimately leads to God

© Janet Martin