Place me – my denial will rest
among those who but rose
a poet’s galaxy.

I know not if I am it. In what may be
persistence, I flower like so and reward
greater offers.

No life would be ridiculous: which poem
in slighting slights itself? The poet made well
if it equals the rose.

A rose is an answer as might be betrayed
in would-be poems not inclined
to do much.

What says the world facing what the poet in me
will become? Myself, I think what
could I wish I were.

(from an exercise using “The Pink Locust” by William Carlos Williams)