“I have much to write you. . .”
—3 John 1:13a
What sets the mind to sizzling
when your deepest notions land
on a searing mental griddle?
Greased by countless possibilities,
neurons burst,
and summon up fresh vistas
of light and sound and stimulation
astride erupting music
where none have yet existed.
A cosmos fits inside one eye
filled and stretched to bursting
with brilliant stars and laden planets
and people, people
with a billion lives bound up in each,
unleashed by a wizardry
of words and stops and spaces
that march across the pages
touching nerves, and hearts, and souls.
Bring them forth, bring them forth,
the muse cries out in anger,
impatient at your halting progress
in setting it all free.
Release the universe within
that you’ve been called to animate,
in living out imagined lives
by a thousand separate clocks,
measuring each and every span.
Give way, give way, she rants,
while you grope along for words,
and stretch for purchase
on a cliff of dire imagination,
dangling by a rope of words
to carve the reader’s mind
by rhythm, tone, and voice,
to match what you have seen,
exactly as you’ve seen it.
March 2020
