Poetry Encompassed by Wonder

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

A poem is a cave-wall painting made

With flame-lit, fuming words.  The smoking torch

Is needed.  When a poem does not fade,

This means that something sacred had to scorch

Inside the cavern and the shaman’s mind.

The eons of the paintings last through dark,

To darkness that refuses to be blind.

The cave becomes the long-dead aurochs’ ark.

The beasts can never die in vain.  The deer

Make holy cavern-nave wall as they swim

Away from death.  Unspoken is their fear.

In blackness all these wraiths are never dim.

  The only human, drawn like sticks, is blamed

    By beauty all around, correctly shamed.

~ Phillip Whidden