Threads

First star showing I'm alive
Was posted in year, 1935.

Tartan threads grow in the fields
Watching stars that heaven yields.

Stripes are custom, long and lean,
Marking my vision's family scheme.

But my banner's so incomplete,
I write to people, I'll never meet ;

Do I really write words for all of them :
The strong women, the thoughtful men ?

But, for myself, a rhyme is sought,
A meter's found to further my plot,

It's only by chance or is it a struggle
That word by word grows my puzzle ?

Somewhere there's another Plowman's Bard
Walking the furrow's straight, deep, and hard.

He tramps God's Earth in want of nourishment ;
His mind's at work for destiny's encouragement.

One is so boldly driven for its benefactors ;
Others, dream in clouds, as if they're actors.

Lasting the longest, beyond a generation,
Some build a society, some feed a nation.

Who said, "Man can't live by bread alone"?
We think of dreamers wherever they roam.

Poets subsist on a sparse spartan menu ;
While writing  words for all World to view.

So soon, "I'll lay me down for a long night's sleep",
Not knowing, if any words my readers will keep.

But that can't drive my lust to keep on writing ;
I write for me, then for thee, then unborn waiting.

Forgive me for being so overtly aggressive; 
In my cluttered dreaming mind, the mess is.

Starting a poem is not, all that, very hard,
It's been done fairly well by many a bard.

But ending a poem, that's a poet's blank wall,
Readers seek closure, bards hear a clear call.

Ronald C. Downie