Bare Cupboard

To many, a poet's a stranger bird than them.

They don't go out of their way to taste and see

the works of those who hypnotise by pen.

The barest cupboard in the arts is poetry.

You'd never make your fortune writing verse

unless you ferment your talent in A-grade luck.

At bottom rung, it's a hobby or else a curse:

instead of playing for money, you're played for a suck.

Is this why poets hide in dressed-up lines,

too naked to show themselves in any other wise?

I look within at the steady light that shines,

thinking I'll take the bare cupboard on for size,

and make my verse hammers, and make them ring

cracking the shells of nutritious inner things.

James Baillie, Maldon