On Literary Immortality
       

You need not worry about the critics, for they have
Not read a word you've written,
And thus can say nothing
Vile or ill-advised or brightly rotten.

What readers you have, those scattered few,
Might have paused at a metaphor
Once or twice, and wondered
Where they'd seen that phrase before.

Though all your books are boxed in the basement,
One stray by a window still lies open
To pages the mice have eaten
And print the sunlight licked clean.

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Copyright © 2019 Elton Glaser All rights reserved
from Southern Poetry Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission