Lives of Poets

What makes me wonder  
Is not why writers and poets  
So young and old  
Succumb to emptiness.  
 
It is the lives they had lived  
Under the bright sky.  
Things they must have seen  
To mold those words of bitterness.  
 
From Homer’s Olympus heights  
To Byron’s mountain of light.  
From the banks of a gushing Nile  
to the flows of the Mississippi might.  
 
Mountains, rivers, hills, and streams  
Have molded words and wondrous dreams.  
Dripping blood mixed with ink  
Together they form a hidden link.  
 
Don’t let those bullets fly  
Nor blades invade your vital stream,  
Until all rivers have run dry  
And the Sun has set its final beam.