Has poetry saved someone’s life?
Their channeled lines have certainly saved mine,
Warm rhythms born on my cold strife.
It’s poured forth as a constant wine
Confluencing my tributaried self –
But they were most prosaic lines
Produced by this slim moral elf
Until I found a common voice in form
From Blake and Keats upon my shelf.
The voices in me made me warm,
But Frederick Turner brought me to the place
Where one is strange and in the norm,
That borderland of half-filled space
Of scribbled silences unheard until
I learned to weave poetic lace
So I could learn how to fulfill
My destiny, to ensure the world’s rife
With life upon earth’s wooded hill.