I don’t usually make any real use of the titles Poets & Writers’ Magazine gives to its weekly prompts: The Time is Now; however, this week the prompt title really spoke to me.  Here’s the prompt itself:

“I was young when you came to me. / Each thing rings its turn…” begins Meena Alexander’s poem “Muse.” Write a poem of direct address to a muse—any specific object, memory, person, moment, or idea that invokes wonder and reflection. Read the rest of Alexander’s poem for inspiration derived from sensory pleasures, multiple languages, and the associations between words and images.

Believe it or not, I haven’t spent much time thinking about that early muse who prompted me to write my first poem.  Probably she looked a little something like a tough childhood combined with a rebellious, defiant teenager.  Not terribly original, I know.  But this prompt has me thinking about the muse for the collection I’m currently writing, and that led me back to where it all started…

YOU CAME TO ME

in the middle of it all:

my father not yet dead

my world not yet crumbled

we sat on your kitchen floor

our feet nearly touching

nothing but music & poetry

between us, the night

quiet crickets & stars

who knew we would burn

the whole house down

just to light up the sky?