An Older Piece Why I Write

AMUSING THE MUSE

My days are like ornaments hung upon the branches of the tree of my life.  Some days are jeweled and glittering, some days decorated with daubs of paint and frost.  And some days are bare-faced orbs dully reflecting whatever lies before them.



I am not crowned with candles.  No bright flames dance amid my boughs.  No sparks sizzle and singe my branches.  I wear a humble star. It is my only light, my only illumination- one softly glowing white star- pure light, radiant light, and a steady gentle warmth- who says the stars are cold and only the sun is hot?



I am not strung with tinsel garland nor ropes of glossy cranberries and white airy kernels of corn.  I am draped in dreams and decorated with streamers of imagination.  I am dressed in visions and at my roots lie the seedlings of poetry and prose. My taproot runs deep, deep into the earth through centuries absorbing language and rhythms primeval.  I know the songs, the stories.  They are bold and vivid in my core, in my heartwood.  I have embraced history and wrapped myself like so many layers of tissue around them and absorbed them into my very being.



I am able to speak in a multitude of voices, to sing songs, both old and new, ancient and current.



I glimmer on the precipice of the future like a promise of a new day, reflect in the past and resonate in the present.



I breathe the stars and swallow the long, dark night like a medicinal draught that refreshes and restores me.  All the secrets of the universe are whispered in my ears beneath the velvet star-studded canopy, many voices speaking, murmuring, impatient to be heard.  Like raindrops they fall in my ears and are absorbed.  Like tears they cleanse me and instill hope.



I shake off the webs of night’s dewy embrace and lift my green face to the first fragile fiery glow of morning.  I am reborn again and again.  I must relearn myself, remake myself, reshape my ideas.  I must draw deep from the taproot and infuse my hungry, thirsty particles of being with light.



And before the sun winks out below the rim of the sea I must give something of beauty back to the world.  I must hang an ornament upon the tree however small, however seemingly insignificant- for if I miss just one day I will have failed to touch someone’s heart and soul.  A moment in time will have slipped away, a gap created, a rent in the fabric, a link not yet forged in the chain, a thread not cast upon the web…something missing for all eternity.



I am compelled to write.