Seeking Council with Muse Artemis

Seeking Council with Muse Artemis

  

Will you come to me now, Artemis,

Out of  your dark obedient forest?

There, where you are content and powerful.

My view of these piney Bitterroots

Are frightfully bold for this mortal’s eyes.

You take advantage of hills

As if they were scattered stones

For your playful fashioning of gigantic cairns.

My River has a frozen sheet over it again.

It’s heat released high into the canyons.

Frosted air crystals flit about wind-torn.

They shimmer, daylight rainbowing them.

Winter sleeps under white snow-covered ground.

I wait for a full spring moon

Not ringed mysteriously like this February one.

I feel anxious for summer already.

My hunger for food is satisfied.

Aloneness sits close by,

Watching.

It is not a time to hunt, as you are known to do.

I too hunt alone.

You could be guiding me, mythical Huntress.

My hunting dog knows you Artemis.

She doesn’t “speak” of you, but knows your

Presence when running ahead of me.

She hunts for you and that is why she runs.

I too, was once a hunter like you.

I notched arrows like you.

I killed and said grace over the meat.

Though I want to be present

I am past too.

And future is drawing options

Of landscapes for me to imagine.

You, Muse, sit silent somewhere

Wildland surrounds you securely--

Unassuming , coy Goddess.

Are you upset with this mortal?

He only tries his writing to learn.

I do not write to take down

The holy or well meaning.

My words must be too vague

They stumble over things looking for

Universals that might please you.

I cannot climb the mount

To your world--so unlike mine

So unknowable and immortal like your siblings.

My life is of a definite time

A time-aged and disfigured life.

Unlike you, I cannot watch and wait musing.

Nor play roulette with hope?

Hope is too mundane, too captive for this mortal.

What do I call the anticipation I feel?

Tell me the words.  I’ll put them down here.

Ought I not imagine an expected pleasure?

No!  It need not be “desire”. 

That would over-power me now.

What is pleasure experienced in the silence of aloneness?

Do I want or need simple conversation to be a-mused like you?

I’ll gladly take conversation;

If the ending is resolution,

Agreeing to terms of endearment

Is more than enough, Muse.

Does this aging mortal have to be slain

Upon your alter on Olympus?

Offered up as sacrifice for offenses?

Show me how to get there and I’ll come.

What if I run away?  I am afraid.

Yet, if I could run away

My every ounce would circle back seeking answers.

I have grown old and understanding

Of my time waiting alone these many days.

You can afford your Olympian pursuits ageless Goddess.

I expect your silence, your anger, and some frustrations

With mortal men such as I.  We earn them.

I am willing and able to cast away from Life’s shoreline.

I’ll go into exile on my windless Odyssey if you will it.

It might be a cure for my lost mate.

Our contract now finished, my psyche

No longer tempered by being alone,

No longer afraid knowing aloneness so well.

  

Courage seems so far away so unneeded by a Goddess.

I ponder manly work and succeed in doing it.

Yet, it feels like function without form.

Going through motions to feel alive.

Is not the circular life of a mortal

Labor for Death’s conclusion?

When guided by you Artemis,

The folly and foils of life

Seem joyful lessons to me;

This mortal among other survivors

Some more fit than I attracting

Your attentiveness.

I have aged beyond being durable

That is outside my resilience now.

Once a hardy youth

Being insignificant is not troubling now.

Existence without purpose  

Has become an expected impression of reality.

Should I throw in my will-towel

Accept assistance of community

In essence, ride with death nearing non-existence?

Have I done enough in this long time of living well?

Do I accept another free ride on life having known fulfillment?

Or while easing into conversations with Death  

Relax resistance to Its ever-present workings?

Or push against Death’s daily wager

Linger somewhat longer

Before conceding to Earth’s recycling,

Before giving back this fully nourished body,

Porter of my tingling soul-mind?

 This year, I seem to be atoning in a Purgatory,

A place or myth conflicting with personal common sense.

Show me a place-word that describes

Suffering for atonement on Earth , Artemis.

A word, my muse, of use in the life I now live.

I will accept these human penances concretely

If they are needed for another loved life.

I write loudly, my muse, alive in a body

Saturated with senses and thumbing through thoughts

Casting symbols in ink upon pages--

Lines for my last act and final scene.

Tell me Artemis:  What do muses do?

Abandon some mortals for others equally frail?

Leave it to the last mortal to resolve life alone?

Oh, the variety of fellow souls

The freely wandering bipeds

Confused by the mess man is in.

Mankind too frayed to mend in all it’s time thus far.

Were you there when we came down from the tree of life?

Were you entertained by our folly?

Am I to start anew;  begin again?

Searching.  Endlessly searching.

Is there no fable or moral you can lend

To aid my wanderings through mind mazes

Sorting trial and error for a way in-out?

Or does life’s mirage split by sensual prisms

Shine through always tattered 

Life so bright and dark at once.

Will you encourage another chapter be written?

So my play; my comedy, my epic

Again ends as tragedy?

Ha!  The varied and divided colors flashing life-light.

Even the wayward moth can see better than I.

Some waves I just cannot sense,

Some light I cannot to be drawn to,

Some fire I cannot be consumed by

Though I feel that is what life is--

A slow burning against the bulb of perfect decoy light.

I seem now unable to choose,

Maybe I am that light blinded moth-life.

Maybe all mortals are this way--the same beings,

Mindful, yet confused, 

Willed, always playing roulette with choices.

How then, do I course myself?  Flee on?

How do I feel powerful into the coming

From the present aloneness?

Oh, Muse of Moonlight, Night-wind of wildlands,

I feel wandering is man's ludicrous pathway.

I do not know the written symbol forming the scent of Completeness.

You, symbolic protector of all animals, are now guide absent.

You, always more than this thinking mortal man.

This man a ghost lost

In a village of strangers.

Come again.  Show me words to final Way,

And I will ink another moment of being

To this momentary page.