Worthless
 
What a worthless thing is poetry,
a product of hard labor I adore;
a counter full of year-old toiletries
will always fetch considerably more.
 
A merchant selling gift-wrapped bars of soap
will come away with profit and some change;
to sell a poem is no more than a hope
washed clean of what a market can arrange.
 
Here! Have a few of mine, two for a quarter—
a dime apiece—the bargain of the day…
just name it! I’m here to take your order.
Hard labor’s even hard to give away.

Don Wheelock


If you have any thoughts about this poem,  Don Wheelock   would be pleased to hear them