“For the experience of each new age requires a new confession, and the world seems always waiting for its poet.”
     ~ Walt Whitman

I shrink from the daunting task and disappear
into the blank page, mind ablaze with what might be said,
feeble fingers fumbling to find some stroke of glory.

A swirl of words swallows me and becomes
a muffled whisper in a storm. Who can hear the poet’s voice
in this screaming age? I bite my tongue in protest,

Still I bleed. I say nothing but know you will hear
my confession, if not grant me absolution, sure as you
will taste fresh blood dripping from this poet’s lips

onto crisp page of the present-day. Now you gather,
waiting for a word from the interpreter of shared experience
entrusted to sound the gong that marks the era’s end.