Lyrics

Cocoon

They say
Whitman
changed one day
from a common journalist
unknown, unremarkable
to a self-proclaiming
poet of genius
and no one
knows how.

Frost struggled
for years
to discover
if he was a farmer
a teacher or a poet
till he took his poems
over the ocean
and became
the bard of New England.

Somehow amid
the marriage
of mortar and stone
hawks and tides
Jeffers emerged
as no one’s pet lyric poet
but as a strong, clear voice.

Something changes them
and they acquire a persona
that is their own.

But how?

Is it maturity?
Circumstance?
The convergence of place, culture and personal history?

Each one
birthed
in a cocoon

changed
somehow
silently
in the dark.