DRINKING ALONE
I walked in to a bar and saw
Walt Whitman sitting there
staring into his drink.
He looked tired and past his prime.
His once impressive beard now
showed mottled gaps of skin.
He started one of those bar conversations
about sports and TV. After a few sentences
he said that he had been a poet,
but that he hadn’t written anything recently.
I said that I was a poet
who was still writing and he said that he
felt sorry for me.
Walt said it was different
when he was younger.
He had freed American poets
from their own vestigial limits.
Other than editors,
poets don’t have any natural predators.