Apprentice in Verse

with respect and reverie

sincerity in vaunted regard

eyes scanning the published pages

of cherished editions from

the featured bookshelf in my

living room and my voice

volunteered in homage to give

tempo and resonance to the exercise

reciting out loud the word patterns

established through the skillful

discipline of their observations

recitations judgments and valuations

scribed for posterity and offered

up to the foggy and precise

alike kept indefinitely shelved

at the congressional library numbered

and collecting dust while in

bookstores amusing teenagers

with designs on seeming erudite

if only fleetingly who then

exit the places where books live

and enter the spaces of animals

men and things known and

unknowable armed only with

mimicry and those still sharpening

implements of intellect those

originally mentioned emotional assessments

that persistent hunger to explain

the world to one’s self and record it

share those findings and emerge

perhaps a shade wiser

for the journey every bit

as much as the destination

but first let us herald

those masters who paved the way

traveled evermore haltingly

by each erstwhile and eager

apprentice in verse

so that standing upon the shoulders

of giants we might feel

momentarily like giants ourselves

and then if Fate might

shine her narrow beam

some fortunate few souls

touched by grace may dare

indeed to live the dream

making Eros jealous of Hermes

baton in hand passing proxy

a sliver of ageless ancient

wisdom along the conveyor belt

of history with the

ceaseless arrow of infinity

before bowing out to the

newly foolish genuflectors

at his stupefyingly

incongruous altar

psshaw as if

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R93UKMFQm58