Thomas Wooten
The Magnificent Ones

The Magnificent Ones

The magnificent ones
were among us
and they kept telling us so.

But of course we didn't listen.
So full of our own dreams
of being magnificent were we

we thought it was all smoke
and mirrors
and advertising.

Then it ended
and they were gone.
Some said they'd gotten tired

and retreated to their beach houses
to await a new generation
of admirers to be born.

But we've recently heard
they've learned
to slip the knot of gravity

and levitate
to the next level of being
where magnificence is

an hallucination
everyone drinks from
and is rewarded

with the loving indifference
children and madmen enjoy
before growing up or being cured.

So now we wait for our own
ascension into magnificence, honing our smiles
and checking our breath against the mirror

where we often see someone
very much like us
looking over our shoulder.

Poet's Biography:

Thomas Wooten has published fiction in The Alabama Literary Review, The Georgia Review, and The Quarterly. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Adirondack Review, the Birmingham Poetry Review, Poem, Poetry Motel, the Red River Review and 3rd Muse. He lives in the American South. You can email him at limeworks50@hotmail.com.