THE POET

There in silence, he sits.
This solitary soul searching
the scenes around him for a glimpse,
a fragmented fractal, on which to
pose his imperfect pondering.
On the surface, a catatonic
cad, aloof and disinterested,
unaffected by life’s happenstance.
But below the layers of sinew
and fiber, there is a spark.
A speck of a spark in which
all the answers of life dwell.
It flits and dances in his soul,
it infects his longing heart,
it leaps boundlessly to his vacuous
cranium, this arena of thought,
where it has room to roam.
Bouncing from synapse to
neuron and back,
expanding disproportionately
to the importance it assumes
but oh, the wonder it beholds.
Inside this infantile ember
there exists an avalanche
of ideas that simmer for the moment,
and have smoldered for all
of his lifetime.
Romantic ruminations of a
love lost or a soulmate found,
ridiculous rhymes of a playful tone,
tactile meandering of a verbal nature,
all abiding in his treasure chest of intellect.
He shifts in his seat, our
spellbound simpleton, this
multi-syllabic snake charmer,
as a tendril of thought comes
a bit too close to that glowing
epicenter of expression. They merge,
taking on a life all its own
to flail unencumbered, this
cerebral conflagration
burning brightly.
Extracting a pen, he jots three words
on the back of his left hand,
an apparent reminder of whatever
bit of brilliance just entered his mind.
Gathering together his scraps of paper,
and his pieces of the puzzle he is crafting,
this omni-present observer strolls
three benches down to take a
new vantage point to view this vignette
called life. And glancing at his
left-handed, self-made tattoo
he reads the words he had written.
It states quite simply,
“I’m a poet”.
Rather satisfied with his station
in this complex world, he writes
with a singular hope to touch
yet another soul.