" The Gods of Poetry "
I used to pray they’d be merciful
and not turn me into some wind-swept Odysseus
longing for Ithaca, leave me an instrument of free will.
Now, I can only imagine their scorn
as they offer— we will grant you three wishes,
but only three, so choose wisely.
Let me see the sun again, I answer, with new eyes,
seagulls, dolphins, and the ocean waves
staining the beach with foam.
Let me stand before the bonfire flames
on that snowy day in my old neighborhood
when I was too poor to buy meat
and turn the roasting hog on its spit, savoring
those tender strands of half-cooked flesh
with my whole being as my friends partied around me.
We can give you fame, they entice,
and money beyond your wildest dreams,
control over your fate.
Take me back to Charlottesville, I plead,
to my basement apartment with the curtain strung up for a door,
and the night-student nurse with nutmeg eyes
who shyly invited me back to her room
and afterwards believed everything I wrote
was about her. Let me start from there
and fail again, more spectacularly, in love, in life.
Think, they say, you’ve wasted
your talents; we can change the outcome.
Let me fail, I beg them, like Atlas
as the weight of the world crumbles
on my shoulders, like Sisyphus
pushing his rock. Let me fail my way back
to this dark cave of existence where I must flint a spark
to signal the blind poet within me to speak.
© 2004 Jim Doss
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