How to (not) Write Poetry on a Saturday Afternoon

How apropos the little one falls asleep
during Act II of Tchaikovsky's
Sleeping Beauty.  It is hard to tear
my eyes away from her curled

hands, fluttering like small butterflies
on the living room floor.  As she rests,
I pull out my notepad and try to write—
but violins are growing into flowers

from the forest floor.  There is a scent
of ambergris in the air, and a slowing
of my heart.  Even Szymborska, open
in my lap, cannot show me my soul.

How am I supposed to write this poem,
now, when I am enchanted so?





Easter Remembrances
                               —for Josef Sudek

A smooth egg in a smooth bowl
on a weatherbeaten, cracked and chafed sill:

These white curves—
so much the engine of the unmoved mover—

resting now          reflective
as though there were something to be said
about seeing oneself be still
and at odds with decay.

STEVE MUESKE's prose and poetry have appeared in print and online in journals such as Water-Stone, ArtWord Quarterly, Rattle, the Wisconsin Review, the South Dakota Review, ForPoetry, Red River Review, Poems Niederngasse, and elsewhere.  The editor of the online poetry journal three candles (http://www.threecandles.org), he lives with his wife, two daughters, and two cats in the Midwest.  He has an unhealthy addiction to chess, and can be heard hurling epithets at cyber opponents in the wee hours of the morning.  A lifelong musician, he is currently putting together a recording studio in his house and slowly draining his bank account and his sanity.

Click here to read more poems by Steve Mueske in ForPoetry.com

ForPoetry