Susan Sherman: Here’s a Poem

to the poets who die unknown
who live their poems day by day
bare the chaos of lost words
Here’s to the poems that never get published
that lie fallow in someone’s veins
that burned in Hiroshima and Nagasaki Vietnam
New York City Portland, Maine
Here’s to the poets in Nicaragua
Cuba South Africa El Salvador
in the southern countryside of all the Americas
and in the northern cities too
Here’s to the women and men
who never even knew they were poets
had no one to tell them
didn’t know how to tell themselves
Here’s to the millions of words buried in a
million places all over the globe
the mouths and hands silenced forever
Here’s to all that magic music beauty
surprise that died unsung that dies everyday
that blood that moves us forward
that holds back the tide