Your Poem

I offer a verse for your consideration
A few lines for your appreciation
The fruit of some deliberation
The result of late night contemplation.

Which is the greater joy;
To write or to have your writing acknowledged
By a thoughtful audience
A like mind that understands what you said
As an echo of their half-formed or forgotten feelings
And acknowledges truth in its simplicity,
Uniqueness or profundity?

Which is the greater joy;
The reaction a good poem can invoke
Rushing blood and rapt attention or
A slow and steady cruise to the bank of recognition
A view through the poet’s eyes,
Or the conviction that those lines
Were written just for you
That the words ring clear and true
Because you and the poet are one?

Joy tonight is in midnight messages
Between a tent under the stars
And my room lit up by my monitor
In muses that work across borders
And poems that come in the night.