​​If only I can hatch a heartfelt rhyme,
(with thought and frowns, it can’t be very hard),
I’ll take my rightful place with the sublime.

O, gradus ad parnassum. One quick climb.
I’ll be crème de la crème and avant-garde,
if only I can hatch a heartfelt rhyme.

Top hat, cravat and walking stick meantime
are ready—attributes to reap regard.
I’ll take my rightful place with the sublime.

No more damp attic life; no fleas or grime.
My poem will be perfection—a petard!
If only I can hatch a heartfelt rhyme.

My peers will shout, “Alors, a paradigm!
Such lofty wit, a wise camelopard.“
I’ll take my rightful place with the sublime.

I bite my quill: crime, slime, Mülheim, enzyme.
The world will bow, salute and call me bard.
If only I can hatch a heartfelt rhyme,
I’ll take my rightful place with the sublime.

*****

Janice D.Soderling writes: ​​“This poem is ekphrastic, generated from a preceding work of art.
“About the mysterious motor that generates, I can say little. But no composer, artist, poet, sculptor works ex nihilo. Earliest man, woman, looked at their handprint, their footprint, and a thought rose, an urge to express what they felt – a primitive fear of death perhaps – and off they went to the caves to imprint their hand, or to carve a footprint on the rockface by the sea. A shout-out that Kilroy was here.
“We hear music in the babbling brook, in the sighing wind, in the raindrop falling from leaf to leaf and plopping into the puddle below. There is poetry in the emotive sounds we make and hear: tinkling laughter, cooing seduction, growling rage, keening sorrow, barking grief. Of such, language is made; of language Shakespeare made Sonnet 73.
“All art is imitation, from birdsong to a symphony orchestra, from the walking stride to the metrical verse. All art is a denial of death. Even the comic art.“

​​Janice D. Soderling is an American–Swedish writer who lives in a small Swedish village. Over the years, she has published hundreds of poems, flash and fiction, most recently at Mezzo Cammin, Eclectica, Lothlorien Poetry Journal and Tipton Poetry Journal. Collections issued in 2025 are The Women Come and Go, Talking (poems) and Our Lives Were Supposed to Be Different (short stories).

‘The Poor Poet’ was originally published in American Arts Quarterly, and republished in the current Well Met, where links at the bottom will take you to other poets in the issue.

Pic credit: Carl Spitzweg, The Poor Poet (via Wikipedia)​

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