1093

If I am a poet, then I can write

Anything I choose to - that's because

The words often don't matter; it's the sight

Of them spread out upon the page which does

All that is essential.  What? - you want

Meaning, purpose, some integrity

To support these words - which I know won't

Begin to hint at what I want to say

But ramble on - in strict poetic style -

To fill the fourteen lines this sonnet needs,

Regardless of my object to beguile

Or yours to understand creative needs?

            Sometimes I think I should have stuck to stamps

            Where quality arrives in serried ranks.

Brian Hick January 2012

©copyright Sally Hick 13.1.24

 1062

I read but cannot understand

Why this is poetry that counts

While what I write

Goes unnoticed,

Yet they're both just words

And mine at least make sense.

As long as music flows

The lines will all make sense

And cadences, which jangle or annoy

Will ease themselves like dischords

Just before their natural resolution,

And even if the body does not rhyme

The heart will strike the final chord on time.

Brian Hick December 2011

©copyright Sally Hick 20.12.23

 903

Words are all I have;

They're all I've got

To make sense of this moment

Before it wanders off

Into a past which quickly

Turns to fiction

Where any truth becomes

Intangible as

Childhood photograps.

But how can I

With any honesty

Write

Knowing that any words I use

Will at best be

Misconstrued

If not

Deliberately

Misused?

So I must risk

Dismissal

By those who do not choose

To ask themselves

What these words might mean,

Content

With what

They know they know;

As if knowing were all.

Brian Hick March 2011

©copyright Sally Hick 27.2.23

 Foucault's Logos

Do I dare to think Foucault was wrong

And that, rather than being the very heart

Of all that is, Language is but a part-

Even inconsequential - when the song

Of all creation does not heed the word

In order to exist or to evolve

Over all the aeons that have rolled

By unreflected? So Logos is not Lord

And matter is not held within its power

Any more than vegetative life

Requires substantive syntax to entice

The bees to gently pollinate each flower.

          But while the jury's out, I suppose I might

          Just continue in the gap to write.

Brian HIck

©copyright S Hick December 2021

 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