Dead Poet’s Eulogy by Les Schofield

Why must the poets die
before their words arouse
the passions slumbering
beneath the lives we browse

like pastured sheep? Must the
roses wilt before we 
desire their musky scent?
Is it written the bees

need die away before
we long for a finger
dipped in honey’s golden
wonder? Should the singer

lose her voice before
we crave her melody
like a cow’s sad lowing 
the wolf-snatched brevity

of its dead calf? Surely
as poets write this day’s
lines of lovers kissing
they’re worth our present gaze?

Artist’s Statement

We live our real lives moment by moment. Each one occurs unimaginably precious, but astonishingly undervalued until the last one leaves us breathless.  Contemporary poets are the seers of our moments, the see-ers of wonder in this drop of rain quivering on this blade of grass pregnant with this morning’s hues at this very moment.  Their poetry calls us to join their seeing within the fiery furnaces of our shared presents.  I gratefully ponder the dead poets despite the effort of sifting through the ashes of their moments’ past, but I am in thrall to the living ones.  Speaking in the paradoxical cadences that are authentic to these times, they seduce me into the present.  Their poems teach me how to become a seer of my own moments.

Les Schofield is a writer, artist, and teacher living in North Carolina where he has taught theater arts, set design, and traditional woodworking. He was raised among carpenters, cowboys, and rocket scientists in southwest and southern California before moving to the Appalachians where he married Kathryn who is a professional folk artist. He is a member of the North Carolina Poetry Society, the North Carolina Writer’s Network, and the National Book Critics Circle.  For the past several years, he has taught theater arts, set design, and traditional woodworking. His academic work includes art, philosophy, and classical languages and holds an MFA degree in Creative Writing. In between swallowing sawdust and writing book reviews, he is writing a novel of the American Revolution as it played out in the Carolinas.