Susurrus

I found the poets
scattered amongst the sparkling grass
of acid induced reflections

I found the poets
bellowing from misty rooftops over
San Francisco alleyways

I found the poets
riding ragged and sweaty on Greyhounds
across America,
bloodshot eyes dripping down the window
greedily pressed to the glass in ravishment
of the passing scene

I found the poets
residing between dusty book jackets
smelling of mildew,
antiquated pages riffling through
the shadows of my perceptions

I found the poets
faces raised to the rain of a late night
Indiana thunderstorm,
splashing in puddles and reveling in
the small taste of freedom

I found the poets
speaking revolution from converted school busses
waking with the drumbeats of Shoshone elders
to the glorious hues of a crying desert

I found the poets
tucking children quietly into bed at night,
backing slowly away to find the solace of their pens,
writing into the world a place where they may live again

I found the poets
wine-drenched bodies spewing forth wisdom
from street corners in Memphis

I found the poets
wandering along deserted highways in a southern rain

I found the poets
whispering the melody of their soul into
my forgotten ears
beneath the sheets of seduction

I found the poets
powdered noses speaking gospel on the linoleum
floor of a farmhouse kitchen

I found the poets
stashed away in diners in
the dark hours of insecurity
scribbling feverishly onto napkins with
tobacco-stained fingers

I found the poets
coiled in anxiety on unwashed blankets,
tremors of childhood traumas
splintering along their skin

I found the poets
hidden behind the ranks of straight-backed
professionals, whose mouths oozed references
to word count, structure and genre
the commodity of writing

I found the poets
in the hospital rooms of vacant minds
and dying children

I found the poets
echoing up from damp, mossy graves
now crumbling back into the earth

I found the poets
in my own home,
my daughters words,
my husbands vows,

I found the poets
in a cozy tavern suggestive of a rocking boat,
in a place shrouded in fog and the
comforting seduction of a song

I found the poets!
and that, my friends,
‘has made all the difference’.

©AnneFricke