A Muse by Lise Whidden

A Muse
by Lise Whidden

She swallows morning coffee on the porch swing
and tells honeysuckle legends
or sad tales about weeping forsythia.

Lighting a cigarette ends every story
an audience waits
between each hazy pull.

She took an anguished lover off the cover
of a sordid romance novel,
but she never tells her own stories.

You can find her pretty well drunk
on evening wine renewal
when she doesn’t work the next day.

Then you might learn all there is to know
about St. Pat’s shamrocks
or how the English misplaced sparrows.

But sometimes sadness crawls into her lap
from the garden corner,
an over grown child she nurses.

These times she tells how impossible
it is to replace something worn
or how hard it can be to remember home.

 

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