Cellar Door

The Ultimate Poet

You collapse ambiguity,

giving the formless its shape.

What drifts as smoke

learns the weight of substance.

Absence becomes something that can be felt.

 

What appears benign to others

you recognize by its gravity,

sensing the pressure gathering

long before it makes itself known.

 

You ask the questions most avoid,

not to provoke, but to uncover.

You choose a direction

and commit to it without apology.

 

You see where another is strong

and name it plainly,

understanding that once spoken

it refuses to disappear.

 

I can write this because I have paid attention

to the way you use language,

how you give form to what resists it.

Some trace of that remains in how I shape a thought.

Even so, it pales beside the depth you carry.

 

The Ultimate Poet.