Well Bottom Blues

I understand journals want to be the first to publish a poem.  First to market with good poems drives readership. I’m driven by other concerns: age (69) and health. I write many poems I think are good, and others tell me they are, and I wonder how many will ever find a reader. Even T.S. Elliot, after he won the Novel Prize, lamented in a letter that he wanted an audience.

The Lie

We write for ourselves, the lie
we repeat to ourselves as our eye
moves down the pages of someone
we know’s published collection.

We're not everyone a liar. 
We write because of the fire
but must all admit we hope 
someone will notice the smoke.

Age has not given me patience but urgency, and old age (there, I said it) with limited income is not a favored class with reading fee waivers.

The itinerant preacher prays for a pulpit, but whenever two or more are gathered there is light, the promise of a harvest of converts to the oldest gospel first spoken by firelight against the dark, the long tale transmitted even if only in the smallest part, a hint of immortality.