Poem Poem by Masiela Lusha

You award these muses with a letter
And you submit to every listener’s ear
A special melody for their wisdom.

You are the song that plays
And replays in the daily actions
Of lonely women who laugh,
Of autumn leaves falling on her gestures,
Of the one blond curl falling in her eye.
Of that kiss.
That one simple kiss so strange and quick
It’s beautiful.
A daily masterpiece. A daily prayer to humanity
And you are what we stand for as sensualists

For something greater. Always greater.

What more?
You are the meditation that tugs
At the poet’s hand to recount her miseries
Night after night.
Day after day—
The page, a moving sea lifting her ship of distress
You are the curling gray hair in a pail. You
Are the whitening age, frail and demure
Against the busy burgundy of society
And teenagers.
You are the shining stove for every poet

Inside of which she watches her accompanying death
Slowly filter into its natural world
And through you, a metaphor
Of suicide
Fills her hair-

You. This daily invention of passion
And sensitivity
Crown the word, the mortality of dreams,
Premonitions mirrors memories death.
You, in your stanzas and free verse
Machinery reflect all that is ugly
So ugly it’s beautiful.
It always is. Always.
You reflect
The lines in every poet—worry lines
On their porcelain page.
You laugh at death,
You wither with tears
At the shadow of a wolf
Snapping his teeth in the mock of night.
Feasting on your pride.

You spring like a lover
From treetop to treetop
The way birds spring to mate.
You learn to fly, swim, die
You learn to defy nature.
You learn to live.

You hate you love, you muse
Over the polished stars beneath the pond,
Reflecting the divinity of your poet’s demise-
You raise the values of the wind
And all her drifting dust—
Following her faithfully.
Always faithfully—you know this.

You see love for the smile
Affection for a handshake
And you see the muse in the two
But you never forget to note
Their clear divide.

Love, affections are singular expressions
Never compared— never joined
Or unrefined with modern cliché:
This is the secret you teach.

Beneath the artistry
Of night, you are the poet’s moan
Or scream—or her daughter’s laughter
In the other room. Or the
Tap of something spring.

You play with her secrets
Her golden depressions
And her garden- everyday brighter
Against her celebrated sadness.

You are the tender walk with no one
The every day speech
The only hand pressed against her shoulder.
The only hand for years.

You are the thickening-

The poet’s hug to comfort
Her place in this society—
You are canvas to her brilliance
And otherwise
And you teach others to read
This world like a masterpiece

Slowly and deliberately

You are the daily poem.