And Her - of a Friend's Muse

Out of the depths of my soul comes my Lady Across heart and mind to spread a light Radiant as the slender moon as she Floats the still black waters of the night The universe comes into being In the shadow of her presence And seized by the vision I am seeing I'm drawn by a longing so intense Entranced I would fly to pull her to me And could I hold or would I Overwhelmed by her mystery Tumble back down the dark sky With all of heaven too far above me Condemned to the earth beneath Imprisoned in this small life I create Bewildered by this bitterness and grief And left in the deepening silence to wait My soul locked and chained within Without her my spirit unable to rise Denied the grace of inspiration again To see the world with merely human eyes So far from the one that produced Wholeness of vision beautiful divine The heart of the unseen reduced To words once made to live and shine By love of light from which they sprang Fashioned first by woman and as fine As any woman's child who lived and sang The songs his mother taught in lullabye While still enfolded in the arms of her who brings This joy from which I stand apart estranged and shy To suffer love perhaps to learn to love all things And recognize in the lowest and most mundane Forms hidden behind her often closing door Are echoed and mirrored in the most arcane Authority that I have honored so much more And charged with the burden of my own success Required to learn what silence has written Is more than any tongue can express Or struggle to contain and fit in The emptiness of words if stirred to verse When all is her and her eclipsed I find The eloquence of love can be a curse So much greater than this little mind.