A Voice

I hadn’t heard my poems’ personal voice
until she told me. Then I sounded myself
writing, and the words emanated
from her insight, as if she knew my breath’s

beat, its refraction in prismatic light.
I continue to hear the light in my pen
even when I am not listening, the words
buried in some source inside both of us.

I never had a muse before, although
I have loved women, and still do. Her own
poetry moves through my mind’s shadow,
a link to the wire that tightens in me, a slow

clock with time enough for me to read how
the connection was made. I don’t want
to depend on sheer illumination. I know
how muses fade in human misuse, in too much

calculation. For these hours, I cannot help
bowing to what depth we might share, certain
though that my heart’s little train starts
my voice that it goes to where she stops.