When did you first see beauty in words?
You poets of old and modern day.
You who mould words so easily.
Like the potter, teasing a bee’s wing out of clay.

Where, first, did inspiration strike?
A search for beauty – one shaft of light so
Sudden, so illuminating, so awesomely bright –
Was there nothing else about which you could write?

How did you learn to carve your craft?
You Kavanaghs, Heaneys and Behans of this world -
Uneducated, grounded, politically stirred.
Your art crying out, demanding to be heard.

I’d tread your every step, devour your every word
To inspire just one poem worthy of being heard.