Septimus Buzzard: be my muse.
You’re special. Most poets
have it rough with your average
run-of-the-mill muse. Here’s why:
just as soon as you’re set
the wings start beating.
No staying power
in the muses I’ve known:
white feathers and no poems.
It’s not given to many poets
to have a South African
nonagenarian deceased veteran
of the Boer War for a muse,
but I’m special, too, Septimus,
and I want you
because of that day on Vancouver Island
when you were telling me about shipping out
on a former slave galley from Bristol and
we came upon the delphiniums. And you
worried about the proper blue to call them:
Wedgwood, ultramarine. Well they were
blue as your eyes could see them, Septimus,
just as blue as that
because later, having a smoke on the beach
(mine all filtered, yours hand-made) you told me
about your younger brother Herbert who
lived it up in Durban when he was ninety-two
by smoking cigarettes while his wife was
out of town and you said, “Never buy tailor-
mades: always roll your own.” That was
good advice, Septimus, really good advice
because even later when the dusk came down
on the flat blue island tide we counted the
seagulls that settled on the water for their
final feed and we thought there were twice
as many gulls as there really were because
the sea reflected each bird so clearly.
And we didn’t say anything, Septimus,
because there were twice as many.
I spent all year back in Ohio corn
country, wearing blue glasses
and spilling tobacco, without
seagulls, ocean, muses or poems.
But today I saw
two swans floating
on a mill-pond not
far from here:
clearly two
Siamese twin
swans ― one above and
one below
and what happened was
the top swan
dipped his head
deep in the pond
to feed
and the bottom swan
rose to breathe
and sing
and his throat was blue
Septimus blue
and he trumpeted song
visible song
blue as delphiniums
drifting as smoke
and it was his own song
not tailor-made
but his own, and it shattered
the sky and the water
myself as well