I would be an Inkling.
But would they have me?
For though I, like them, in ink do write,
Stark reality
Trumps presumption,
And I yield
To listen and watch them run.
But then, I suppose,
The little inkling I have
Of why they laughed and cried and lifted cups
And inked about—
That smallest inkling, though slight,
Might be light enough
To crack the door,
And set a chair,
And then for them
To invite this wee inkling in.
Elliott Tepper
O Poet,
Make old worlds and Words New.
Make new worlds and words to bow their heads,
To behold and hold and tell the depth and girth and grit
Of men whose song was sung
Before lips were found to sing them.
O Bard,
Go in search of new myths,
Lost, but found.
Myths that point to the chink in time,
The place where golden suns
And silver moons do rhyme.
Dare O Child,
Accept the challenge song of Elfin friends,
Melding light and sound into speech and chime.
Ere the setting of the morning star,
Hear the rumble drum with Dwarfish hammers pounding,
Rounding liquid dream from stone and mithril bar.
O mere Man,
Repeat again the ringing of the mountain deep
That wakes the sleeping Kings.
Bring good, but thick Men back,
Back to the edge of time,
Awakened
And molten with desire.
O Fire, Fire, Fire….
Wordsmith unsplinter Elfin light.
Elliott Tepper 2010
‘The poet’s eye….doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven….
And give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.’
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare
I would to blend,
As the bard brings down and makes plain to me,
Lofty majestic heights,
With the little white flowers on my cherry tree,
I would sing again the old canticled tales,
And follow their tracks in the dust fall of verse and rhyme.
I from earth would reach to draw the map that leads to Thee.
O God of nature,
Thou art greater still than all Thou hast made:
Beauty so nearly worthy in its warp and wool of worship.
I do not confuse light and light’s shadow,
Nor You, who stand: over, above, apart,
And yet in all you have made.
Your art is artless,
Yet rises to beget
Dream and dreams of you in me,
Draws us on tip-toed genius to create,
To scratch and imitate
Our Father’s drawings and his play.
Elliott Tepper 2010
A poem is like a rescue note
Scribbled on scraps and sealed,
Then locked in time’s sand worn bottle
And cast beneath the stars
To ride Heaven’s tides in hopes of finding life.
O Wind set my crafting a ship
In search of other ears,
To let someone know
That here I hear,
That on this little stranded spot
There stands another man
In like search for hearts
That long for life’s sure center and clear edges.
But how, how?
If I know not my own bearings and longitude,
If latitude escapes me,
How could they find me,
Return my call?
Would they seek me out?
Could they return on the tide,
Read the Wind’s former roads of yesterday,
To wander backward to where my hand penned its plea
And set a bobbing my sealed craft upon the sea?
My best hope:
My words will find their voice,
Will quicken hearts and minds,
That my life will touch someone’s life—
And each will think and some will say:
‘See, I am not alone in this place.
There are two of us, at least,
Who think this way.’
Elliott Tepper 2010