Bruce Whealton: On Being a Poet and Other Existential Ideas

I think some poets write
because of a deep anxiety
we feel about the finite
nature of our existence.

This may not be
something conscious
that we feel -
some of us -
but we may want to live forever,
in our poems
or in some way
not fade away
with no one to remember
anything at all
about us.

If this is so,
then I may be
one of those poets
and now, I’m writing
as fast as I can
these poems that I share.

I write this as a letter
“To whom it may concern,”
I turn to you my friends
family and other relations –
my readers,
and I ask you,
if anything were to happen to me,
I entrust to you
my poems -
the ones I’ve written
and the ones I will write.

If anything were to happen to me,
help me please,
to ensure,
that poems live,
on,
that should I fade away,
others will have something to say,
something about what I contributed
how I made some contribution -
some impression,
some way that I touched you
and that I lived for something.

It’s so easy for things to get lost
and then what will remain of me.
What do people say about me?
Or what will they say?
It is my greatest fear
and the source of my greatest
despair that the answer
to that can be summed up
in one word,
“Nothing.”

I think of these things
not because I think something
will happen soon to me,
but because life may not present
time or opportunity,
no matter how many years
I may go on writing.

Bruce Whealton – March 13, 2009

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