In the Company of My Muse: Poem #5

Poem #5:

By Lu Sobredo

INTRODUCTION
My muse came along on another one of my jaunts today, to my favorite Café. My best friend Ken Miller was convinced that another poem was manifesting in messages I sent him.

It is a conspiracy between my best friend, my muse, and others as you shall see in the newest verses. And the photo is as fresh an inspiration for these verses coming alive. On his last day of travel to mine and my Mother's ancestral land in the Philippines, my husband James Sobredo on his early morning communion with the sunrise, captured what my heart longed for...

Sunrise in Baybay. Aklan, Philippines--Ancestral Home. ©James Sobredo 2020

IN THE COMPANY OF MY MUSE: POEM #5

I’ve read somewhere, though details escape me,

That leap years are lucky years.

Whether defined by science, legend or wistfulness,

There’s an unmistakable buzz.

The buzz overwhelmed the 29th of February 2020

Of energies raised

To heights unseen for so long.

My muse relentless, kept me writing for hours.

Hours into the night. Mysteriously, it stayed to greet

The morning of the first day of March.

Whispers hummed in my ear.

I couldn’t help but comply, as thoughts

Poured out like words imprisoned

Desperate to wake after a long slumber.

Is there truism to what I hear
About leap years?

That they are great for finding optimism, 
Love and spiritual wisdom. 
Or better yet, for spiritual wisdom

To find those in a drought.

My muse of late makes gentle,
Albeit persistent demands.

Demands poignant, 
Oddly insistent to the point of my unease.

Did you know February came from februum,

Latin for purification? 
No? Don’t worry, nor did I.

What kind of arrogant poetic license did my muse bargain for?

The muse that encroaches, inserts in my life

Of all the times on the Gregorian calendar,

Just as the Lenten season starts.

A leap year must be when decisively we take the leap

When the Earth on that one day in February

Every four years does not orbit the sun
In three hundred sixty five days
As it habitually does.

My muse dares not turn away when given license

To take a leap of faith,  

Faith to restore, renew, re-ignite, take claim

Of passions destiny brought.

Is this the same muse that accompanies me

At Cafés while people-watching at noon;

Or in my bedroom while listening again and again

To Michael Bublé crooning about a summer day
That has come and gone away, in Paris and Rome,

And how he just wants to go home?

Strange that gradually the heart grows familiar

Keeping company with a muse

That soothes the drought; soothes the impatient wish

For my beloved’s return home

From his travels afar so I, too, could go  

Again in places known or unknown.

It matters not.

My mother in Heaven must have conspired

With the angels. Because while on Earth

She prodded, nudged and fed

The gods. The gods, she swore, were waiting for me
To burst into song.

Maybe the same gods fed and
Inspired my muse.

This muse unapologetic of its strums

Swarming my head, 
Unannounced takes deliberate steps

With an air of grace-filled confidence

As if stepping onto a stage and totally owning it.

Neruda dreams more exposed, blushed
In sweet horror in company of my Muse.

Poem ©Lu Sobredo

Photo ©James Sobredo

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

About the Author 
Lu Sobredo is writer/publisher at Lu Travels Abroad, a blog dedicated to folks whose limitations do not hamper them from traveling. A year into early retirement her world collapsed from the diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). Her total life changed, but she did not let RA define her. With love from family, friends and an awesome doctor, she regained some functionality--her new normal. She will have RA all her life. And she now writes about life and travel with RA. During the pandemic of 2020, she stays put and writes poetry and a first novel, a travel of sorts but in the heart and mind.