Beware the poet

 

I hide here

Behind this line

This period

This exclamation point

A scared child

Exerting imagination

Painting pictures

With bruised fingers

Smudges telling the world

I am here,

The child whose heart bled

For five and half decades

Over some silly incident at five

A snatched peach

A tumble from a stair

A mother’s refusal to reach

Beyond the bars of her

Hospital room,

She still sounded from a father

Brother, husband, me

Whispers of unutterable things

She can’t even reveal in rime

And I give away in snatches

Between each couplet or verse

Not meaning to hurt

But always managing it

Between the poet bearing

Sweet poems

Beware his charms.