I hear.
I feel.
I see.
I’ve gone quiet.

Ah, Marianne!
Ah, Trish!
Muses of the bench!
What moments I had
with you
(and Paul, and all)
in that small cafe.

Not for the discounted
pastries (past 9 p.m.)
came I,
but for the fuel
that filled me
from words tumbling
and singing
and screaming
from hearts
and souls
and minds.

How many
napkins
ripped I apart,
furiously scratching
short verse
that vented my brain.

Now?
Now,
so far from that place
I can’t even remember
its name;
So removed
from the Enliten’d
creative muse
that once
lit my flame;
I struggle
to have a voice,
to say what I must,
what I should.

My woods,
rocks,
rills,
temple’d hills
sing loud
and sweetly to me,
as wrens call
each morning
and wind and owls and coyotes and I
howl
each evening.
And I can capture that all,
that peace.
There is no torment,
no pain,
as there was so often
there.

Yet, here,
there is something still
missing,
a driving force
that came from knowing
each week,
on one night,
I needed to stand up
on wood-plank’d floors,
to raise my voice
toward a black and silver orb,
to lift my hands,
to clear my mind,
to speak for myself.