Of old the Muses sat on high, though
my Beloved spake, and asked me thus:
Why poetry from its beginning to end?

Then three jolly Farmers bet a few pounds:
“Oh! Love,” they said, “is Queen of Queens!
And, yes, we must always have a skeleton.”

Little torch-bearers, alone with me in the night,
help me clothe my spirit with sparkling light —
even as I hide my heart in a nest of rosy thorns.

May love come back to this vacant dwelling place
where so often I hear village voices calling, Help!
Help us to serve and save all the poetically blind.

Our market yesterday was like a Fair, each detail
there for training up poets, general and generous,
like window-washers knocking off at half-seven.

Much is heard these days about poets’ services:
Lisabetta, Marianina, Fiammetta, and Teresina
all know rivers flow fast past bluffs and levees.

The whole matter concluded, then, is to benefit
the balance and blend of poetic equipment, lost
and left behind in a wood called Rouge Bouquet.

Still, there is nothing lovelier than a living tree.

. . . . .

Free.Found.Verse by Susan Powers Bourne, 2019.
Source: How to Write Poetry, E. M. Coulson, 1919.