! To Denis, Tara, And The Muse Of Poetry Poem by Michael Shepherd

O Muse…

I have a serious question for you
but I can’t wait to put it into beautiful poetry.
I hope you understand…
Respect.

Some poets feel the need to consume
substances – liquids, solids, smokeables, injectibles…
before, during, and after the creative act
as, uh.. consciousness-enhancers …
(there are, needless to say but I’m saying it,
those who strongly disapprove, but also,
those who call these, last defences of the immortal godself…)

I’m wondering, (and of course,
I’m fairly well versed [so to speak - a curious phrase, that]
in the slight evidence of the Dionysiac abandon
that balanced and accompanied
the ancient Apollonian disciplines…)

I’m wondering whether, you’ve always approved
these means of lubricating praise to You and poetry…
especially in this Iron Age, and we so far
from sparkling and nymph-haunted streams
and rocks and groves and verdant fields of sheep and goat
and shepherds writing poems to all this…

or is it that
You, knowing who your faithful worshippers truly are, and
gently sighing, allow their glorious poetry
to manifest quite irrespective of what they believe
they need to find You within their writing selves?

I’m sorta hoping that
You, who know all the arts of healing which poetry bestows,
reward these devotees of yours through thick and thin,
…through sick and sin…
with that blessing and that heavenly smile
in their pure hearts; replacing all these
Iron Age’s physical protections
for the heart, the mind, the soul,
with Your pure fire,
the fire of Your immortal speech..

which looks so strange upon this printed page;
not sung aloud to Illyria’s echoing rocks and hills …

and that indeed You love them
more than they or we may ever know,

O Muse.