Why The Muses Were Wrong by Lady Danika

"Why The Muses Were Wrong" -- ©March 2015

Had my love been but a flame
it could have been fueled by simple things.
Tis true. Tis true.

Or held within the confines of a bricked-in pit
and tended with a rough or gentle hand
and the shove and prod of a stick or booted kick
to keep the embers glowing as might have been willed.

But my love was never so simple as fire.
Fire is the love of Youth-
the all consuming brilliance
that consumes and destroys despite
the momentary heat and comfort
and then burns down to bitter ash.

My love has always been the ebb and flow
of salty ocean waters
renewed and tended and replenished
in the pain and sacrifice of my own sweat and tears
as I gave what all I had of me for them.

Of course, water too can be dangerous.
It can drown, overwhelm, erode the shores...
But the ocean never dies, disappears, or becomes less.
Instead it cycles, rages, changes, calms, and evolves.

And yet what worth do we put in the former?
When all the love poems speak of love as an ember
an ever living flame to light the way of darkness!

Fire eats up the oxygen of souls!
Even the stories of old equate fire with Hell!

Was there ever an antique pen
that spoke of love as the ocean?

At least when love is an ocean-
the brave soul willing to compromise and bend
who is willing to learn to surf the waves...
can walk the sandy shores for glittering shells
each of which tells a small story of sacrifice
each its own small gift given in offering
to the beloved barefoot collector.

Fire can be tamed! Snuffed out! Smothered!
But it is not so easily re-lit as some might think.

You can walk the edge of the ocean
and circle the edge of the world
And she will -never- dry up!

But for most, the interest in such a strong love
seems to break like the ocean waves themselves
and crash against the rocks when the tides are high.
Because it is easier to see the traditional as love
when the muses have long defined it in poems and songs
as flowers and a soft smile highlighted by firelight.

Lest the broken-hearted lover
who tries to tame the ocean forgets...
the vapors that rise above those waters to the clouds
which later birth the great storms in cycles
are required to renew the deep, vast waters
that shimmer and undulate.
And those were what you first saw and loved.

Not the fire.

Perhaps the luminous memories of the water
that held you floating in warmth and cocooned in safety-
your lips and nose held above the waves so you could breathe-
when fire would have instead just singed away your skin...
Will remind you that such a love cannot be bricked in.