Bulwark Poem by Jan Sand

The outer edge
Of my awareness
Has its population.
These are the pillars of my world
Where construction
Stands sentry
Against the bottomlessness
Against the toplessness
Against the vertigo
Of nothing to hold on.
When a support crumbles
Or is transformed
From real to ideal,
My world trembles.
I was surprised
When the princess died
To find her there
Amongst the stanchions
Of my architecture.
So,
Now ideal,
She joins
Martin Luther King
And JFK and FDR
And Mickey Mouse
And Robert Frost
And Marilyn Monroe
And Groucho, Harpo, Chico,
And Lincoln and Washington
And Albert Einstein
And W. C. Fields
And Shakespeare
With friends Hamlet,
Lear, Henry V and
Julius Caesar,
Along with Frankenstein
And his clumsy buddy
And Dracula, Loki,
Stan and Ollie,
Thor, Mae West,
Plato and Socrates,
Goldilocks,
God, Charlie Chaplin,
Mephistopheles and Gandhi,
Zeus and Donald Duck,
Henny Penny,
Jesus Christ
And the little engine
That could.