Once Walked Alone Out Early One Day

Recently I’ve been asked to write a couple of articles on my picks for 2011; one article has been sent off, one I’ve yet to start (shhh!).

In the interim I thought I’d dress up this very average poem (actually it’s a ‘piss-take’ about people’s perception of poets and poetry) with links to my favourite recent blog posts.

Once Walked Alone Out Early One Day

Once walked alone out early one day,

not the cruellest month but the start of May,

when a stranger approached with a manner so gruff,

stopped dead in his tracks and bade me “enough!”

‘Dost though write the poems?’ he said to me,

what business of his I could not see,

so I turned my head to continue my walk,

but he halted me once more, pursued like a hawk,

“dost write the poems?” he started to shout,

and I knew that no course could turn him about,

“Yes, I write the poems, what is it to you?”

The man shook his body in his humorous pursuit,

then up on a soapbox he started to mimic,

‘bout a man from Nantucket or some limerick,

“how wise you are,” I said to he,

“so cultured in art, so fine of degree.”

for poets know more than to entertain men,

whose soul would be splintered at the sight of a pen,

‘tis for fortune and fame that men may aspire,

but the poet must rest in the shadows of higher

aspirations that one day someone may recite

one line from a poem, like an orchard for one bite.