Sharon Waller Knutson is featuring poems about the muse in her online magazine Storyteller Poetry Review. I found the descriptions inspiring. Where does poetry come from? Where does it go? I think of it as a spirit most of the time, a spirit that won’t visit unless I invite it by opening up my senses and communing with nature, art, other poetry, literature, music, history, people, dreams, memories, imagination, emotions, surprise, and more. Here’s a poem I wrote shortly after poetry’s first visit to me.
Lonely poetry tip-toed to me,
planted visions nocturnally.
I was a lucky dreamer. Words
floated and bumped against
other words, bonded into clusters.
The next day poetry called me at work.
Interrupting my concentration,
she invited me to her party. I struggled
to get there, missed my exit, overshot
the address, finally bumbled
into her building, handing over chips
and salsa from the Minit Mart,
all I could dig up at such short notice,
while exquisite gifts from others,
lustrously wrapped, were heaped
artistically around her birthday cake.
Still, poetry--all shimmering and ethereal--
grabbed the cheap plastic bag from me
and smiled, saying, I’m starved. Let’s eat.
I suppose I thought that poetry must have been lonely or she/he would not have sought me out. The surprise is that poetry continues to accept my humble, fumbling reaching toward him/her and still does. Poetry wants to join us. Like a spirit, it needs human beings to stay alive.