Is an old poem of mine that I tender to you to turn your mind away for just, even just, a few minutes from the sadness and the depression that I read about in poem after poem.  I am an old man whose sighs are recorded in the lines on his hands.  It will be better. You will be loved.
Be brave.


Lead to Gold, Philosopher to Poets

When the philosophers abandoned
castle turrets for ivory towers,
lost was the secret of
I and thou,
of turning lead to gold,
but these cagey, canny scholars in new residences,
who traded
perspicacity for pensions,
before they left,
they tasked to the poets,
a singular task,
cloaking them in a life long responsibility
charging them as follows:

Be the harpooners of the unexamined life,
with unfettered rhaposdy,
exhort the loopy
to light candles of illusions,
canonize the nursing mothers to deliver us
the kinder Ishmael's who will revel,
lead us with warmth and apprehension,
with the strength of sinews
fixed and flexible,
we will believe and
they will teach the rest of us
that the first commandment
is to empathize.

**with clinical observation,
dense and demanding,
make us laugh at
the comedy of our situation,
the comedy of our conscience,
our free to see,
the peep show of us,
explicate and deconstruct
our unexamined lives,
help us to extend the boundaries,
record the voyages of our timepieces,
declare us all free and victors,
file away the chains of language
and declare us all poets