Selfie, With Muse Poem by James P. Roberts

She is suddenly there as if shimmering out of clear air.
You have been waiting for years, but she has had

other lives, other people to care for who demand
her time.What matter that she once saved your life

from suicide simply by sitting at your table during lunch
on a cold, dreary February day when you were sixteen

and scared, scared of yourself, who you were, what kind
of future for one who had flunked four of six classes?

Who at that very second decided not to continue the farce,
looking at, but not seeing the tray of mush before him?

At that moment, you lifted me from the ground. borne
on wings of pen and paper and oh so sweet imagination!

What a year that was, a re-awakening of Self and Soul.
Yes, something was born and carefully nurtured.

Then she vanished, gone in a summer,
lost in the distances of the future, but the seed

she had planted slowly grew into a vast jungle
of words, poems, essays, stories, books, music

and ghosts.The world entered a New Age.We now
communicate instantly...but do we "know" each other?

And -surprise! -today, at the registration desk
where you are attending a literary conference

you hear a voice and your Muse has finally returned,
offering a hug and demanding not your soul

(that had already been given to her long ago)but a Selfie
with her Smartphone.Who can refuse their Muse?

So we stood cheek-to-cheek, gazing into the screen
of ourselves ready to smile at the world

and tempt the furious Fates.