The Human Touch 2013 - University of Colorado Denver

A Meditation on Muses
Kevin P. Bunnell
What is all this
about Muses doling out favors
to those lucky few who strike their fancy?
Who are these fugitive beings
who rule our poetic lives?
They are evanescent feathered things
who perched a while on Dante’s hand
as he brought forth “Divine Comedy”.
They are early morning spirits
who sat by Mozart
in Betramke’s garden
as he wrote fi nal fl ourishes
for “Don Giovanni”.
And down one of them fl ew to the Martello Tower
and touched Joyce’s pen
as he had Buck Mulligan wave his
heretic razor and shout,
“Come up, Kinch. Come up you fearful Jesuit.”
Surely a muse clung to Emily’s shoulder
as she strolled in Amherst’s cemetery:
“I never hear that one is dead
Without the chance of Life
Afresh annihilating me.”
And a furry ball of inspiration
fl ew down from the green Irish hills
and whispered to poor Hopkins:
“..and blue bleak embers, ah my dear,
fall, gall themselves and gash gold vermillion.”
And what of us mortals?
What evanescent feathered things
perch on our shoulders whispering inspirations?
We tell ourselves to sit in silence,
open our minds
and wait for the words to come.
But time passes, and there is only emptiness.
We wonder if there is some queue
of aspiring poets that reaches, endless into the mist
awaiting the Muse’s loving touch---
that will fl ood forth long sought words.
How can we wait so long?
When will we invent our own private muses?
Who will come
at the least fl ick of a needful thought---
or at the utterance of some mythic mantra.
Then how we shall write!
How we shall throw our hearts onto that blank page!
How happily we shall walk among the blessed ones
who glided so easily to the front of the line. •
I am certain a minor god stood by
blind Homer as he spoke forth
the myths of the Golden Fleece
and the tragedy of Troy and Agamemnon dead.
PG 88
PG 89