A poem tells the heart: it must be true—
unless perception is a lie and all
considered feeling false; unless we err
by saying, steal the essence of the said
or bury it among the speechless dead.
If by my lines I mean to raise, to stir
awake, to show, if you should look and call
it wrong, or say I have no right, where do
I go? What should I write, distrusted, if
not what I have written in good faith?
What is the spirit of the art? Let true
be wider than the witness, I or you;
let words give substance to the poem’s wraith
and let us meet it running to the cliff.
Libby Maxey is a winner of the Princemere Poetry Prize, the Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest, and Greenfield’s Poet’s Seat Poetry Contest. She is the author of Indwelling (2024) and Kairos (2019), which won Finishing Line Press’s New Women’s Voices Competition. She lives in Conway with her family.