Spring 2008, Volume 4

Poetry by Douglas Evered


No Country For Old Poets

Writing poetry is for the young at heart
Ones with feelings they must impart.
They must have fire in their bellies
Not worn out watching tellies.

Fires get them to take on the world
Get the revolutionary flags unfurled.
Bring down kings and tyrants
Lift barriers to would-be migrants.

Get babies planted in willing wombs
Get old folks buried in waiting tombs.
Get rid of pervasive negative thinking
That the ship is momentarily sinking.

Look around at young poets past
They wrote poems we love that last.
Greeks and before them Persians young
Wrote poems that were spoke and sung.

So if you want to be long remembered
Write poems that can't be dismembered.
By cruel critics reading our poems today.
Finding reasons for us on coals to flay.

Speaking as an older poet, still at it
A ball coming my way, I'll still bat it.
I have this constant need to rhyme
Put to work, it's a gift sublime.

Subjects that move me deal with aging,
Issues that older poets face are engaging.
Obviously young poets will get old
When that happens they'll not be as bold.

As they give up truth and beauty
Seeing the hereafter as their duty.
Espousing belief in a good afterlife
Or scaring us with pain and strife.

What I love about young poet's work
Is the way it makes my poetry perk.
Sparking energy and ideas to boot
Finding stuff good enough to loot.


BIO:  “I am Douglas Evered, I like words. I put them into poetry, fiction and biography (mine). I'm in the Library of Congress like a tree falling in the forest. I'm old but still out there among the animals. Aging is best met by keep moving, I do.”