To the Muse

On the Birth of a Muse

I call her a flower;
I convert her to brush strokes;
I compare her influence to the immensity of the cosmos;
I crave her flesh and crumble at the sight of her eyes;
I cultivate thoughts of walking her through a forgotten Montreal;
I collect moments we have shared in my mind and relive them;
I craft her iridescent features into words the best I can;
I chose, initially, to ignore her, but ultimately failed;
I conceded to that which I could not defeat; and now,
I conceal her from the world: No one sees her as I do.

All of this, all of the metaphors, all of the similes,
Employed for one simple reason:
I cannot write her.
She has become the inexpressible,
The unnameable, the indefinable,
And if I swam through a lifetime of words
I could only fail to clone her to the page.
But she remains, channeling my pen from across the globe:
Poets are destined to chase their muses ad infinitum.