Be'Mused

By Joseph Hesch

I sat twirling the pencil in my fingers.

I had carefully sharpened it four times now. 

The faint green notebook page on the desk

could have been a paint swatch

for redecorating someone else’s bathroom

for all the good it did me just sitting there.

Occasionally, I would rub my eyes,

hoping for a red-tinged glint of a vision. 

Or I would scuff my feet

on the carpet under the desk,

briskly comb my fingers

through my hair, and reach out

to touch the lamp,

perhaps expecting some static-charged

electrical spark inside my head

would nudge the pencil across the page

in something resembling chains

of subjects and predicates. Iambs or trochees.

Nothing.

And then, I think for no reason,

since I wasn’t anywhere near that memory,

I thought of you. 

That’s when something bubbled up

from beneath the rock of my heart,

through my hand, onto that page,

and I was happy, for a blessed little while. 

Are you Beatrice or Old Will's

"muse of fire, that would ascend

the brightest heaven of invention?" 

No, you are the other,

the one that launched

my thousand thousand dreams.