Poetry?

How can you say you don't like Poetry

When you're aware it's life and death to me,

And all the 'work' I do can go for nought

Compared to one good image, one fertile thought,

Which pins down what I feel as I refine,

Within the strictures of the iambic line,

The words that play at Scrabble in my head

Until they settle and the lines are read?

But then the poetry's not in the words;

It's in the winter sunlight which can bring

Grey hills to life, a sudden flush of birds,

Or moonlight over Chanctonbury Ring;

            And your artistic soul, purer than mine,

            Needs no words to experience the divine.

Brian Hick 

©copyright S Hick December 2021