A MUSE WALKS IN THE DOOR

A MUSE WALKS IN THE DOOR

A muse walks in the door

as if we’ve met somewhere before.

Is there anything more tempting

than a woman with a vice

and a wound so deep

you’ve been falling for light years

into a black hole you call love

lonelier than the singularity

that hasn’t reached bottom yet

but hears there’s a whole new world

on the other side of her hourglass figure

if you ever do make it through

to the far shore

of her kind of abrupt Rinzai satori

gone, gone, altogether gone beyond.

She reminds me of the city lights of Port Angeles

seen from the southern tip of Vancouver Island

on a clear night by the sea

across the Straits of Georgia.

Fairy dust at the foot of an extinct volcano

starting to get active again

with every upward thrust

of two continental plates

along the San Andrea Fault

trying to leave a mark on the world

by shifting for themselves.

And it’s not always easy

to distinguish between

inspiration lust love and an earthquake

one from another

when the earth shakes under your feet

and the walls wobble like musical saws

in a house of cards

clear-cutting your old growth forests

with a complete disregard

for the senior sonority of the sequoias

or the sound of the wind

in the laurels of their poetry

when Apollo’s trying to get his hands on Daphne.

PATRICK WHITE