The Muses-a Poetic Tribute to the Three Muriels

Duncan Christy celebrates three women, all named Muriel, who inspired his creative life.

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I grew up surrounded by very strong women – an ideal upbringing! Three of them—a grandmother, mother, and sister—all bore the first name of “Muriel.” It wasn’t much of either a linguistic or artistic stretch to view them all as “Muses,” all of them deeply influential in my life. Lovingly influential. And thus, with Mother’s Day just behind us, I devote this quartet of poems to them and to all muses who encourage and enable creative people to create.

Muses

Poets need Muses. For inspiration

and a host of other things – a twenty,

a warm bed in a cold town, vacation

postcards with deep messages of plenty. . .

We could go on. We will. The difference

between persevering and achieving

the title “poet” – and not – is expens/

ive. It’s more than an act of believing

in poetry and behaving accord/

ingly. You’d be surprised at how a soft

voice saying, “You’re talented,” can afford

the continued sense of being aloft.

A good laugh, a good meal, the blues is

no mo’ o’ not much chez the Muses.

Muse 1

She looks back on the pavestones of her life

with a tough gaze. The heavens’ beau regard

is near and calms her. Principally a wife,

she offers a wife’s deep support – love ard/

dent, on a shield of tender interest. She

wrote “Opus 1” on my first poem and

that’s how I came to know myself. Champi/

on of words and music and of the grand,

she finds in solitaire, a game of chance

played alone, her final truth: When you have

serenity, you have half of life. Plants

surrounding her, she awaits the unrav/

elling, the last gaveling in her court

of life, the neat verdict: “She held the fort.”

Mother

You held me at my christening. You remember

chiefly the blemish on my forehead

and how heavy I was that December

day. Of my innocent charm you said,

“Only a mother could love it.” Now

you are a recovered alcoholic

and I am a man. This illustrates how

the passage of Time can be expressed quick/

ly, in a phrase which makes the corridor

of events seem only a threshold. Hand in

hand we cross together, never for/

getting the past, unable to abandon

each other. In a nutshell that’s why

you’d do it all again, and so would I.

Muse 3

Prickly, very, But see a rose there

of surpassing color. A single rose

In a graceful vase, petulant to share

its immense energy with the eyes and nose.

*

She represents a positive force in

life, a will to be. Against the end,

she’s a barrier. Against the in/

justice of Time to frail flesh, rend/

ered by William Shakespeare to such effect,

she’s a smoky voice of joy and suff’

ring. Her woman’s blues she learns to project
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with the sweet savvy of the street. Enough

heart she has for a family, enough soul

to keep her babies warm at the North Pole.