The Highest Prize
I am not intelligent;
IQ middling, slow to think
(except when I’ve had caffeine’s drink))
I know people whose vocabulary,
Skills in math and history
Outdo, surpass and outshine mine
By kilometres miles,
Eclipsing talents, each outrivaling
My wiliest of guiles.
And yet, and yet
I lie or sit
And never quit
Creating verse.
My biggest blessing, little-lest curse
To (all the time) be struck by phrase
That never hazes,
Never dazes or confuses.
Simply takes my life and uses it.
Perhaps fusing the parts, (I hope)
Unjoined or compromised or dopey.
Of course, being the seated type
That learned to type when just a tike,
I snap things up and write them down,
Typing up and clipping to with paper clip
Each page of quip and deepest scrip*
While taking ownership of ideas wise
And ideas definitely dippy.**
I admit, without self praise,
That I’ve been blessed with artist-joy.
(A gift I didn’t have to buy
It being given me for free).
The gift to knock together, forge concoct,
Then synthesise chords, words, whatnot…
The highest prize I could’ve got.
Perhaps intelligence is overrated.
One can feel complete and sated
By a zillion other qualities:
Not sensory but definitely
Meeting needs:
Ones that feed the world as well.
All other prizes, as you know,
Gone to the hell of false impression’s phantom spell:
Of no importance whatsoever.
The Highest Prize 9.30.2018 I Is Always You Is We; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Nover Corwin
*(written certificate)
**(scatterbrained, silly or eccentric).
Arlene Corwin Poetry 