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“Sing Goddess”, how classical epics begin:
 a quick invocation to the muse Calliope.- D G Moody


When old new beginnings
lay ruined around my feet,
I find myself forgetting
and in forgetting I find
falling leaves of memory
drifting through my mind.
Then it is I seek the place
where she patiently waits,
from out of the dark stream,
abiding still, in my dreams.

Each day is rubbing me away,
while years multiply behind me,
and for every squandered hour,
my inspiration becomes sour,
as my muse declines to stay,
and the rhyme slowly slips away,
slipping, over the falls, to the
silent pool of my minds decay.

And if this skin is all that I’m in,
why should I put more in the sack?
Or am I just a broken jug – a crack
In its side – whence my voice elides?
Or maybe I’m just a rusty old tin;
where I hide unfinished verses in?
Meanwhile, memory slides away,
because I cannot persuade it to stay.

Yet poets do, as poets surely must,
until time shall confine us all to dust,
and all our dreams lay unrevealed
until we have been long forgotten.
So, sing Goddess – sing, and I shall
try to catch the rhyme on the wind,
to shrill this old skin; and be bolder
to scoop another hole in the water.

Queen of all life bestowing
and of all mercies showing
grant to me the better part
that by the practice of my art
I to myself be better knowing


© D G Moody 2023