Are Poets 'Romantic?'

Or is that just something someone who doesn't understand the real beauty of language, image, sound and day to day life would say?

I vote the latter. Of course. I don't much care for the empty verse which is an advertisement or a TV reality show. And in a metaphorical sense - to spell it out - because some need it spelled out: that means a sham or a shadow of what things actually should be, because they have been so hackneyed and so formulaic that even if valid, only a structure remains.

Not truth or beauty. You know Keats would agree. And it took me a while to understand that ode - even though I grasped it back in high school.

This is a poem built on a latin phrase, runs through Omaha, NE in the snow and the wisdom of cats. Orignally published in Dislocate, the University of Minnesota's literary magazine:

Prediction

My small cat crouches outside the screen door -
still open, through winter is coming. Even stone lions
outside libraries shiver; blind but smiling,
smelling the air and listening for snow,
tasting it on the tips of their cement tongues.
It will taste like silence.
Now he waits outside, old leaves
trailing behind him down Jackson Street
as if they could follow autumn. I have
already taken in the flowers -
the chrysanthemums believing they must
bloom in December, the lethargic
ficus tree.

"Tough Cat," my neighbor christend Robert,

though the name doesn't fit -
he's sheep-faced; chin snow-cupped
like a clown. He hesitates with the wisdom
of the very sad or very funny; decides

at the last moment to bolt.

But this bravado will not last.
The cantakerous sky tells the future.
Semper Fidelis, stone lions state wisely,
bringing on the expectation of snow.