Ode to the Muse at Wolff Cottage

for FCWA

I know you live here among floor gaps and plaster cracks along the bedroom wall

where sleep fetches a new shade of morning sky through half-draped tall windows

and I call you out or you find me, not sure which

Yet, somehow, you greet me each morning before or after the walk to the Bay.

Later days, I see you in faces I meet counting sidewalk lines back to you

The woman with a home outside the Library, I hear you in her, too; sure of it now.

Take me with you, she shouts to no one.

I beseech you for Lady Alchymia, but mainly her adepts whom I hunt in your black-white

kitchen; perhaps it is hers, once was hers, but you live here now

louder than all of them.

You meet me in this room where I scribble solitary words sprawled like magnolia cones

littering these rooms as some random cover to hide the gist, the discord.

Perhaps the stories by these other guests carved you forever into shelves of rhetoric.

Did you remain here for me? Tell me you did.

Stop with the questions, you say.

Point me to answers, I say back.

Answers are not why you came here, you say finally

as I ready to depart, leaving you behind for the next

and the next after that.

Robin Throne

October 2016