The Poets

Sadly, poetry has become something of an anomaly in Autauga if not in all the world. As the world seems to evolve faster and faster with each day and new technologies like telescopes taking on the job of viewing far horizons, it seems that the need for a poet lessens every day.   Few will mourn the passing of the poet.   There will be writers always, well, I hope there will be for if not, what shall I do with my time?   But the poets are like master painters. The best, with just a few strokes of their quill can paint a scene before the reader's mind, where the reader feels the tiny hairs on the back of their neck blow in the fall breeze that only a poet seems able to describe.   I am simply a news teller usually. This column in this, gentle reader, your favorite broadsheet, isn't usually given to sentimental fluff or to use that new overly used term so many of you seem to like, milque-toast. We won't go into the background of that term in this column though I could certainly write a piece on it and may do so in the future.   The poet, of all writers, is the least likely to be known by name. He or even she, is a humble wit, one who looks about, silent, observing while at garden parties, or even the public house. They are memorizing phrases for a scene they see that none of us can.   I admit I have from time to time recognized a sketch of my own self in the midst of something I thought quite ordinary but a poet has captured with the elegant stringing together of words, as if in a painting that will last for all time, a single moment in time, framing forever the mood, mapping faces with emotions and hidden thoughts that the viewer, or rather the reader can only guess at. Perhaps most of all, the poet, the dear beloved poet has that indefinable quality of being able to catch a wisp like a ghost of something past and something not yet come and points the savvy reader to its nuance.   Poetry is disappearing. For, and I myself, must take some of the blame for this disappearance of fine art as I write my little descriptions about Lady Rowan's lavish tea with the sometimes cruelly tinged words leaving Lady wondering if I have complimented or made them the butt of a joke. Poetry is a finer art and I mourn its passing.   Tonight, in this then, my usual gossip article will leave the majority of you in confusion and perhaps that is a good thing. You should wonder what you have missed. You should follow rainbows for a change instead of feeling the glee of the barbs normally aimed at (thank goodness), not you this time.