! ! The Aged Poet. For Kealan If

When he was young and life was poetry and poetry was life and girls made poetry in his heart he’d showed his poems to an aged poet who was quiet a while then nodded his head and smiled and said ‘keep writing’ and he swore that day as long as he could hold a pen he’d write some sort of poetry and so he did and so he did and when he was too old to hold a pen he spoke his poetry some say in an Irish pub and people came from miles around and said sure it was a t’ousand times better than to read his poems on the page which was itself worth – and that last phrase was poetry for who is not Irish and a poet and when he was too old to walk down to the pub they came and listened at his door and at his window and when he was too old to speak they came to see his silence and left as poets for their head had joined their heart