The Muse is usually a she
according to art history.
More than once I’ve
served in that capacity.
I’ve also known it as a he
a love, an ardent kind
of sustenance, a boon
to heart and mind.
In the end I think
it is a voice inside
wherever the best
part of me abides.
It is ancient, bardic,
will not be cajoled
or come when called
or do as it is told.
“Do the work,” it says,
“and leave the door ajar.
Do not worry.
I know where you are.”
.
.
THE MUSE
Near 3:00 a.m.
the call comes
without fail when
somnolence limps
through darkness
down the hall
and back to bed.
Then elegantly
curling, hanging
on the wisps of drowse
the wordings come
perfect wordings
for the saying of what
never has been said.
Must remember this
a weary whisper
tells the feathers
of the comforter
but when the morning
comes, it is as if
the wordings never were.
.
.
Are they trying to be songs,
those small urges nudging the heart
toward the throat, wanting to live on air?
Very like songs they are,
fragments of song, ideas for a song
swimming upstream to a belonging
with mute swans on the clear
mirror of a mountain lake
gliding toward the inevitable.
But what if they’re off-key?
Sung wrong? What indeed.
Try to remember what
someone looking for the lost chord
midway up a mountain in Tibet
said, and which I pass along:
a bird does not sing
because it has an answer;
it sings because it has a song.
………………………
Prelude to a Necessary Song
The Muse is usually a she
according to art history.
More than once I’ve
served in that capacity.
I’ve also known it as a he
a love, an ardent kind
of sustenance, a boon
to heart and mind.
In the end I think
it is a voice inside
wherever the best
part of me abides.
It is ancient, bardic,
will not be cajoled
or come when called
or do as it is told.
“Do the work,” it says,
“and leave the door ajar.
Do not worry.
I know where you are.”
There were no stars, or I remember none;
no evidence or inkling night or day.
Unless I’m forced to count the sun,
which never lit anyone’s way
but indiscriminately spilled upon the fuss
of things, goading as equals, good and not,
to race, to chase after the same bus
which never ever could be caught.
I was immersed in city time, heaven obscured
by lowering, by thickening of air.
Was it Elizabeth the poet who assured
about the stars: “they’re there, they’re there…”?
I did not even think to look.
And what good would another’s knowing
do for me? My nose was always in a book
so I could hardly see where I was going.
.
Originally posted, May 2012
littleoldladywho.net 