OUTMODED

   “Still climbing and continuing to aspire,
   I am not prone to pulling in my reins
   But rather would urge Pegasus toward higher
   Flights of fancy and more mellifluous strains.”

   So might have sung John Keats or Percy Bysshe
   In their transcendently Romantic mode,
   But to our modern tastes, that’s gibberish;
   We’d rather watch an ad than read an ode.

   What pass today as poems are not songs:
   They may be made for minds, but not for ears.
   So what is one to do now who still longs
   To sing like bygone bards and sonneteers?

        What one might do is what I do each day:
        Tune up my lute, invoke my Muse, and play.

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