In my world, the busts of poets
are 5,000 foot tall and chiseled into
the side of a mountain in the Black Hills.
Poets are more amenable to proud Lakota
than are the faces of dead presidents
who never gave a damn about sacred lands.

Whitman and Eliot went up first.
Then Stevens, the insurance agent
who waxed philosophical in his off time
and sang like he had a glass throat.

Now they are thinking that
maybe I belong up there. That is
the older, more accomplished me
with the beard that hides my weak chin.

————

Ed Ruzicka has published four full-length books of poetry, most recently “In the Wind”, by Sligo Creek Publishing. Ed’s poems have appeared in the Atlanta Review, the Chicago Literary Review, Rattle, Canary, and many others. A number of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Ed is also president of the Poetry Society of Louisiana. Ed lives quietly under the green of live oak trees in Baton Rouge with his wife, Renee.