The Poems I Never Wrote

I have pages of unfinished poems, most a menial scribble. Thoughts, simple phrases, baited hooks without a nibble. Rhyming lines lost like balls because of my faulty dribble or tossed aside because my muse and I began to quibble. How many romantic sonnets were derelicts in my head because I didn't note them; too lazy to rise from my bed? Unwritten, they expired when from my mind they fled. In dawn's light they were buried as my tears were shed. Departed is the beauty of verses that might have been, and if I'm recognized as a 'poet,' I would consider it a sin. I can hardly bear their death; executed like Anne Boleyn, and its shame I feel for the loss. I'm riddled with chagrin. I wish those phrases had burrowed deep inside my mind, those I no longer recall. The forsaken ones I left behind, abandoned unintentionally, those I have hastily maligned with neglect or passivity. To grieve for them, I am resigned. Should I pen a plethora of poems and ten thousand more, my guilt would never be erased, so I write this with candor and a pledge to face this litany that I undertake as a chore, to value my flowing thoughts as ones I should never ignore. October 7th, 2022