raise up all those dead poets
the great and merely good
gather them all in a hall
along with the living
and the nearly living
crafters of odes and sonnets
villanelles limericks and lines
un-rhymed in jagged constructions
let me put my favorites
in the finest seats
(it is my imagining after all)
and let them each read one
or two of their best
and no one will look
underneath every word
trying to find missing meaning
no parsing of complete
or incomplete sentences at this
show no we will just listen
and let the words spike
through our ears
and land in our brains
and if we follow the reading
on a written page our eyes
will be pierced by beauty
not searching for the unsaid
nor the unwritten and each
poem will stand on its own
sound and in its own shape
casting passing shadows
making resounding echoes
in this great hall of poetry
what a concert this would be
poets reading free from Homer
to Milton to Keats to Kipling
and Frost and Yeats and Heaney
then Service then Roark
and young Alexie followed by
Nash and Lynch and Collins and more
for days or months until we’ve
heard them all in their own ways singing
and we’ve laughed and cried then rested
and walked outside to sit by the river
listened to the calming verses of silence
seen the words written in the shapes
of rocks and kept company with folks
whose poetry is in their lives only then
will we once again take up our pen
