The poet, in his unique role as daredevil,
contributes far more than most anyone
else to the advancement of humankind.
His primary habitat or milieu is
devilment. This adage describes his
behavior and was likely first uttered
by him: "Fools go where angels fear
to tread." It appropriately applies to
the manner he conducts himself.

The daredevil poet lives on the cutting
edge and often behaves ostentatiously
daringly even when interfacing
adversaries and people with a vested
interest in maintaining the status quo. 

It is the poet who reveals and promotes
 expanding truths about romance,
suffering, ecology, community
peace, war, immortality and in so
doing challenges society-at-large
to devoutly practice them.

Although society allows the poet
more freedom to roam in the arena
of permissiveness than anyone else,
the daredevil poet stretches the
limits of the permissiveness paradigm
in taking a farther reach. He is ahead
of his time or most folk are late. In
retrospect it is easy for a person
to acknoweldge that the daredevil
poet was the first person to declare
certain truths to be reality and worthy
for humans to embrace and become
better people and create a better world.

Henry David Thoreau was a daredevil
poet. Listen to some of the words he
espoused: "Why should we be in such
desperate haste to succeed and in
such desperate enterprises...? I think
that we should be men first and 
subjects afterward... . The authority of 
government...can have no pure right
over my person and  property but what
I concede to it." Regarding nature he
asked, What business have I in the 
woods, if I am thinking of something 
out of the woods." 

O daredevil poet how often you have been 
our savior, saving us not only from
external adversaries, including each other,
but from our own enslaving mindsets.

Society is indebted to the daredevil poet.
The truth is, he is not a daredevil but
a daredivine poet. With Shakespeare  we
exclaim, "How like a God!"

Copyright 2010 by Uriah J. Fields