The Poet

The perversity of verse is that it sings inside your head
Inside your mind the words take wing, outside they’re flat and dead
Inside your head the music spirals higher ever higher
Singing point and counterpoint to set the world on fire
The thread of melody teases as you try to bid it linger
It dances, always out of reach. Evades your groping fingers
The irony of poetry is how we try to clasp
Our hands around a lullaby too delicate to grasp
The perversity of verse may not be what it seems to be
Perhaps the fault is ours who try to capture what is free
The irony of poetry and life the way we know it
May only be that poetry has no love for the poet

©️ Jane Jago 2018