[Jim Ramsey]

Candle Power

When want of will and dearth of cause constrain
to keep ideas and words outside the brain,
a map of worry cannot sidestep strife
or set a course to fill the sails of life.
Don’t blame some lack of love from mortal kind,
or frame your formless thoughts in squares of mind,
to make excuse for failure to perceive
when asking gods themselves to please believe.
When, all your musing days, not once you’re brave,
when, soon must choose to burn or rot in grave,
now take the bolder path, the bolder traipse—
this truth, above the rest, accept with faith…
that through the toughest tests and hardest times,
those poets truly lit have writ in rhymes.