Whenever I have a few minutes to kill I enjoy a few poems from my poetry cupboard...
But for a bit of thought and ink
Spilled earnestly upon a page
Names like Longfellow, Tennyson
Would lie in some forgotten age
And we would not be awed and thrilled
If thought in ink was never spilled
But for a bit of ink and thought
Falling madly or glad or sad
Then Shakespeare, Frost, Milton and Keats
And Coleridge would all be dead
Wilde, Riley, Whitman, Kipling, Clare
Would decay in a grave somewhere
But for a bit of thought and ink
We would not recognize this cast
The Brownings, Blakes and Dickinsons
All would be buried in the past
But for a bit of time and ink
Long now we taste their thought and drink
© Janet Martin