The Poet Knows

‘The Poet Knows’ A time and a place—

gone forever.

And you cannot keep it alive inside.

Living in the past surely kills.

All must slip away—holding on,

holding in—is death by degrees.

Life is letting go and never looking back.

But for the poet this truth is

Insurmountable.

The poet is born and lives to

Remember.

He sacrifices his happiness in

Committing the human stain to

words upon a page.

He exists to feel;

emotions are a tempest. When at rest

he knows it’s just the calm before the storm.

The waves of treachery course through

his veins.

He lives in peril and knows this.

He crosses the horizon line time and time again,

only to discover it eludes him,

leaves him dangling.

The point of no return lies within himself.

The sun and moon exhaust his heart.

As much as the gold blaze warms his bones,

the cool crescent soothes his heart.

For it is twilight he understands and adheres to best.

His love is a periscope

endlessly scanning the skies, the earth,

The unspoken.

He is everything and nothing.

Everyone and no one.

Only himself.

He lives waiting to die just as the

Future waits for the past to fade away.

Remembering is the soul’s gallows.

The poet anticipates the chair being

kicked out from under him at any given

Moment.

He knows the certainty of his own mortality.

But he’s lived so long perched upon

life’s exit that he no longer believes

he will fall.

Rather than wait,

he steps

off.

His final thoughts are of you.

Wheston Chancellor Grove //

10/19/2015