How many times a day
do you breathe, pulling
swirling air, fresh and
sweet, into your lungs?
How often have you said,
“Many thanks, air, for always
giving me what I most need? “
How often do you see
Sonya’s watercolor of
the musician in Renaissance
attire playing fiddle for a dancing
couple and walked blindly passed it,
with no melody in your mind,
no rhythm in your gait?
How often have you finished
writing a poem to your satisfaction
and ignored your debt of inspiration
the Muse hovering close by?
And then you will tell
your friends a likely story,
“Today I wrote a poem.”
What of your luck sleeping
through the night visited
only by benign dreams
of fountains and waterways,
the scent of pine trees, and
the kind regard of yellow-eyed owls?
Do you acknowledge the Gate of Ivory?
When you re-read “Hamlet”
yet again, are you once again
churlish to sweet Ophelia
and oblivious to thoughts
beyond the reaches of your soul?
Does the Abyss open its maw
only after you have passed by?
What makes you so callow?
Is it a hidden life
that isolates your waking life?
Is it a stony heart that
crushes your tenderest feelings?
Have the threads connecting your soul
to the Soul of the World snapped?
Observe, my friend, the signs
that flash behind your eyes,
to the sounds that linger
after listening to Schoenberg’s
“Verklarte Nacht”, to the sudden
illumination that floods your mind when
flesh and soul clasp flesh and soul.
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