Poem

To write one perfect poem

That’s what she said

I’d give up all the things I’ve done

The things I’ve seen and heard

If I could write a perfect poem

If I could find the word

 

I like it oh I like it

The poem is the thing

Expressive of our feeling

Life’s very tingling

To encapsulate to crack it

To hit it on the nail

Then to recite it every day

And love it without fail

 

The poem is the life you live

It struggles to be born

You make mistakes go wandering

Sometimes you feel forlorn

But that’s the point the challenge

Each day you join the fight

Find your way from dawn to dusk

And learn to do it right

 

Brian Fahy

5 March 2023

 

+ Joan Bakewell said she would give up everything if she could write the perfect poem. Poems set out to capture life and to communicate it, to share it, especially to capture the feeling of life. A poem seeks to get to the essence of things. In truth, our lives are poems that we are striving to write. Every new day puts paper and pen in our hand and invites us to write the story. The perfect poem of life has many flaws in it, but that is the beauty of the struggle. We overcome our own weaknesses and the problems we have met with and in the end, like the Lord on the cross, we can say, ‘It is achieved’.