In Defense of Lesser Poets Like Myself / Mark Flanigan

Our failure is not a failure

at all, merely

a last-minute train ride

without tracks, destination?:

Atlantis, a place no longer

believed in; it’s like

an unpublished page, a lecture

in an empty auditorium

without either sound or light;

it’s like a body

pulling on a rope

with a weight

twice its own,

   the quarry unknown

and unknowable.

It has something to do with

no longer being able to

   know or believe in

the whole story, understanding this

limitation, a certain acquiescence,

relying only on instinct, intuition—

and we take these small things

and we speak of the little poetry

   that still blesses our lives

and though it may not seem like much

standing, as it has to, next to

a full-scale map, albeit one

   of a smaller world,

no it may not seem like much

   to Homer or Milton or Shelley

but all the same, somehow,

   it seems like everything

   to us, the lesser poets,

these small moments stamped

   into Time’s sands,

futile footsteps made surely

to be washed away by the tides

   of Poetry,

when, at last, It shall

sweep clean our landscape

one final time, disappearing,

and taking with it our

   last vestige of Truth

   last trail to Perfection

   last guide to Atlantis

   last Poet,

whether epic or lesser

no longer being of concern.