Inspiration calling

Inspiration comes when it will, at no ones beck and call. If you answer, reach out to meet it, it might get familiar, start calling. But there is no preicting, apprehending it on its vague flights around the earth, unless it selects you.

But you can make it welcome. Fill the bird feeder with the right kind of seed, so to speak. Set out the bird bath. Of course, it is you who ends up taking the bath. You gotta go looking for yourself, that’s when inspiration finds you. Then, seeing that you are taking great care, it might alight for a while. If you keep it up, it might come back.

Its cyptic. Mary Oliver said it’s shy. She said you have to make a date and keep it.

If you say you will show up to write when the baby - the fat muse - is sleeping, then it might come to take a peek. If you didn’t show up, don’t think it wont notice. Oh, it will. It won’t come knocking next time.

But if you show up, it might make you a regular stop on its routine circumnavigations. It might begin to habituate your dwelling place. Eventually it will be downright harassing you as you bike down the smooth sidewalk, forcing you to scramble through your backpack for a pen and your pockets for anything paper, to smooth out reciepts and tatter the back with words. Then you’ve got it. Then you better take care of it. Then it’s the lover you always needed, coming on its own terms, leaving you delighted and entranced, mesmerized, horrified, helpless and rivited, by what pours - not out- but through.