by Tara Allan Stewart

Created on: March 03, 2009

I am a poet.
Poets are necessary in our society.

Poets are said to be the timekeepers of a generation, the historians of what has been, the seers of what will be. Most go unnoticed, fade into time, as notebooks of art and music and magic fade with them. I don't want that to happen to me. I want to complete the dialogue I began over 25 years ago when I began my life as a poet.

I see poets as the people in the bell tower, the sentries of the present, ready to pull the rope with the force necessary to tell the story of the moment.
Some pull on the rope with all their might, and the sound rings hollow and weak, rarely reaching the ears of the waiting villagers, and we all are villagers on a global scale, starved for information and truth. Other poets pull on the rope and deafen themselves with the cacophony of sound without significance. Some get tangled up in the rope and do not survive their entangled web of what becomes their own death knell.

Yes sometimes a poet watches from the bell tower and reports all she feels and sees, and when she rings the bell, noise becomes music to tell the story: a lullaby, a eulogy, a celebration. This poet can play the nuances of soft rain, incoming thunder, or sound a warning for the people below so they can save themselves. A poet rings in music that tells, through the tiniest of nuances, the birth of a new child and the people feel the wonder in the sound. She copies the sound of a flute as it sings a mournful goodbye, and the people cry. She brings forth the sound of voices, choruses joined together in perfect harmony to celebrate the end of a storm and the beauty and joy at the new spring that is here and now, and the people dance in the streets.

This is the voice I carry with a simple bell. If by my words you come to know me and why I must do what I do, perhaps the dialogue can continue. I sounded the bell and it was heard.

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