Negative Spaces

To the artist negative spaces
May help define a shape,
While to the poet negative spaces
Are nothing but a blank slate.

Now words and negative spaces,
I wonder, are these thoughts of mine;
If I was to leave out in places,
How would that look on the line?

Maybe old Gertrude had it right,
“A rose is a rose is a rose.”
And maybe we poets have lost sight
Writing what the reader already knows.

So perhaps the perfect poet to be,
I could become like the lost leader;
A master of the negative space, that’s me,
And the rest I’ll leave up to the reader.