The common, not the sensational, represents Poetry; the very life-blood -- imagine humanity unable, let us say, completely oblivious to higher function. No music beyond the actual primitive;no stories that we take deep into the human cndition; no poetry to transform pain and loss; just imagine a world without true art of any kind; the poverty of such a world would paralyze us and would not be worth living. Meaningless never transcended, a symbiotic relationship: artist and those unable to with from their own heart . . Tell me, how would the generations ascend or honor life . . . in empathy,touched within, we learn to touch others . . . The true evolution would be nonexistence. Not to exaggerate: Just think: no song, no trancending loss . . . but a world, as Darwin might have put it, smothered by it's medocrity, limited by its ignorance. Does succh a world sound at all familiar? One man takes his suffering and the residue is love.

Having arrived, freezing, at the
abandoned shack, the solitary traveler
scanns the room with a practical eye:
grateful for the contours the room
offers in a world so often fosaken.
The fireplace is as ckean as ash.
He empties hi pockets: an unpaid bill
that weighed on his conscience: a letter from an old friend, unanswered,
a child's drawing and the changes;
his Beloved's new address, she, who
without warning, had abandoned him;
his guilt for the strange happening.
And a thick wad of new poems, recently
pulled from the depths, alone, judged.
He found, too, a dog-eared book
matches, just a single match remaining.

His love shone with a warmth beyond
words, beyond self, beyond death
following him pretending to be life.

His love fluttered upon the thin walls,
and it was such a tender flame
for as long as it lasted.