25 Where Has It Gone?

Poetry is a form of writing that uplifts,
A metric to gauge emotional tonality,
And a lens by which to see the mind of an age.
It holds within a bastion of meaning,
And breathes into language the hope of a future.
It breaks out of the bounds of the page,
And lends itself to words about words, just as here.
Keeping ever in mind the guiding rule:
That it should reach to the limits of our experience.
Not always beautiful, sometimes rough,
But entirely human.
However, it now has lost its wings.
For where will you find it flourishing?
Never to be, in this barren epoch, what it was in every former time.