does your muse need to know? - Vicky MacDonald Harris
How the tilt of his head brings to mind
the angle of the branch on the tree, or
the incisive slip of words onto my page?
The tree's branches wander up the sky or blow
down depending on the earth's spin.
My pen's ink wanders and doodles
like his beard's curl that day.
Sometimes, the sweat on his shoulder
is the thing that bears my ocean of words,
his squat the thesaurus I use to write my day.
His bicep is the measure, the ruler that aligns
my strophes, and meters ink, cartographs
every page I hold tight. I name him Atlas.
Originally published by Tiny Poetry: Macropoetics, Issue V, February, 2017
Vicky MacDonald Harris’ work resides in The Lincoln Underground, The Flat Water Stirs: An Anthology of Emerging Nebraska Poets, Tiny Poetry: Macropoetics, Two Cities Review, and Hobble Creek Review. Recent work in Fiery Scribe Review, Janus Literary, Strange Horizons, Ellipsis Zine, Great Lakes Review, Whale Road Review, Mantis, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Paragraph Planet, Eunoia Review, and Roi Fainéant Press.
