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A Quiver of Poets

Perhaps not a quill of poets

—but a quiver.

A vessel of feathered shafts,
their flights once borrowed from the birds,
each waiting
for the drawn breath,
the bending bow,
the moment of release.

For every feather
that steadied an arrow's flight
would one day steady
a poet's hand;
the wing becoming quill,
the quill becoming word.

We are armed
less with certainty
than questions.

We quiver too

—not only with fear,
but with wonder;
with the trembling
before truth is spoken,
before beauty is recognised,
before grief discovers
its own name.

The wind without
finds answer
in the weather within,
until language itself
takes wing.

And should our arrows fly,
let them seek
not flesh,
but complacency;
not hearts,
but the walls
that keep them hidden.

So, in deference
to wiser birds,
call us not
a quill of poets,

but

a quiver

—feathered

with borrowed wings,
trembling
before the string is loosed,

each bearing
a word
that hopes
to find its mark.

.