If poetry is a type of spectrum
Like, say, the one they draw for autism
Then let us sit comfortably down at one end
A smiling and rhyming Pam Ayres-shaped bookend
And away at the other, so many could reign there
In the academic, serious, artistic best chair
The middle ground, too, is a busy old place
There's continual jostling and fighting for space
There's metaphor juggling and clutching at balls
There are daredevil efforts, some stumbles, some falls
Competitions to win and points to be earned
Journals to woo and hopes to be spurned
It's a tough, mean old game but it's always being played
Poets aren't born, no, in workshops they're made
So, if this is laid out, this spectrum affair
Then where do I sit, do I stand, do I stare?
I'm this and I'm that but I'm more Pam than t'other
I remember her chair legs, the fires, her mother
I like a rhyme sometimes and I side with the song
I did try to stop that but stopping felt wrong
I went to academia (but it never came to me)
I ended up exiled - a high art refugee
So I stay where I am and I sing till I burst
I could be a dead poet, it could be far worse
And you know, at this end, we can last pretty well
We go quiet loudly, as perhaps you can tell
We don't shuffle off nicely to obscurity
We like to keep shining, our lights burn so free
© Rachel Fox 2006
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