MUSE SISTERS

My poems shoulder water, knit webs in amber.

Forget we once were close.

Forget the sweet scent of understanding.

When we meet, my sisters,

the hour of that blizzard unknown, unstoppable,

you’ll be the south pole, I the north.

A hundred years, three,

the soul on its journey

tapers to a streak of light.

“Postmodern”: what’s left—

what straw finally stoops the camel?

I refused, but its usuries

keep cutting musical strings.

In thick medical files, how many mouldering patients,

how many naive prescriptions to correct?

Are there yet pathways to the heart,

moments to make divine orchids

bloom wild again in deep mountains, dense forest?

I brushed the postmodern once—

my voice stalled

at its false teeth, gimmicky conceits.

My name rhymes with no era.

My scattered lines

pitch toward earth’s molten core,

no will and testament hung for all to see.

Let there be no funerary rites,

but a plunge to their darker home.

Through the fields of another life,

I’ll walk with you,

hear your highland barley tune,

attend your fiery farewell,

tugging at a lonesome sleeve.

Write then

the crystalline misery

taller than Olympic gods.

Bred by the muse,

I serve an inverted elegance.