TOBIN JAMES MUELLER
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The Summoning


The blank page begins to fill
as a wind forms at my back,
flowing through, around, letting
my eyes be the eyes of singing,
the universe and i.

I no longer sit at my desk. It is more.
I am summoning.

When I write, the dimensions of my body
cannot be defined by the measurements of my flesh.
When I write, first one universe, then another
opens inside my abdomen, streaming up my chest,
radiating into my arms, my fingers, my chin and ears.
I summon scenes with beings full of will and want,
intent on more than birth and duration. Inside they come,
fertile and seething. This is the process: this expansion,
this possession, this habitation, this celestial touch.

But there is more than wind. More than breathing stars.
There is a muse, a listener, a light. Within, without.
An ubiquitous, inquisitive presence that more
than encourages, more than inspires.
She is the key that unlocks, or, perhaps, the energy
behind the key. Or, perhaps, the hand that holds
the key to the lock... and turns. Or, perhaps,
she is the womb that opens at my touch.
She is the companion of sense. The belief,
the enjoyment, the reason. And oh the love
the love the love that more than fills.
She is the fount of exuberance that carries me
beyond courage into a place of doing.

She is you, my lover.

You see, it is not words I summon, but vitality.
The rest is a making deeper than children.

Drafted, spilled out on the page, I take these
children words and rear them. And they
learn and play and multiply. And they
speak, forming imaginations
all their own.

Each time I rewrite and shape, I touch again
the heat of stars, the swinging portal to the new
dimensions glimpsed. And feel again your nod
and reach. My happy why.

But this sense of holy conduit, of the goddess smile,
of playing the harmonies in the wind of life,
lasts only so long as I work. Until the piece is done.
When the last stroke is laid, the light goes out
and all dimensions implode into the black hole
of my solitary gut. I swallow each star
in one bite, only to hunger more.

I am valid only so long as I create.
When the sense of love ceases to animate,
my trueness collapses like a marionette
and I take up the strings of my wooden body
to move it about its life,
knowing the difference.

Waiting for the next.



The Summoning © 2000 by Tobin James Mueller
"Falling Past Love" published by ArtsForge Press.
All rights reserved.