Meeting the Muse ~ Practical Gods

By Melanie Lee
Author, “A Year In Sedona~Meeting The Muse At Wisdom’s Edge”
(September 24, 2018)

It must be troubling for the god who loves you
                       To ponder how much happier you’d  be today
                       Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
                                   — Carl Dennis, The God Who Loves You

My birthday is on the horizon (seventh decade!) and the days of spring chickenhood are long gone. I’m celebrating a little early by taking an innovative sabbatical week, devoted to reading again poems from books I love. Like selections from a previous birthday gift book, Practical Gods, the Pulitzer Prize winning volume of poems by Carl Dennis (www.poetryfoundation.org).

The book’s publisher notes that many of the poems are meant to help us name the everyday, available gods that are easy to ignore, both those that frustrate and those that sustain life and make it rewarding. A most suitable reading choice, I think, for musing on life in the  seventh decade, because the poems nudge gently but firmly, far beyond accustomed modes of seeing and perceiving. Which is of course the point of poetry and prose after all. Reckoning with new awakenings, epiphanies and realities is both the grist and the gift of living at wisdom’s edge.

Take my friend D, for instance, who gave me the book of poems by Carl Dennis. D is also about 70 now and he used to be a hotshot healthcare exec in New York at a prestigious hospital/medical school. It was science by the book for him, day in, day out. Then he suffered a massive brain hemorrhage, retired to Arizona and had to relearn how to do everything from scratch. It seems his left brain cognitive functions had been massively impacted and his whole way of perceiving and experiencing life underwent a major shift. Who imagines these things could happen? We think it’s always somebody else whose life gets upended and then wanders off in a new direction for better or worse. But in truth, there are indeed many futures open to all of us.

After a period of adjustment to his new circumstances, D came to terms with his reconfigured future. Determined not only to salvage, but to create beauty from his remaining capacities, he started writing poetry and joined a writer’s organization that every year holds a national writing contest. So far he’s taken several first prize awards and garnered a good number of second place and honorable mentions as well. His poetry is delightful and he himself is a very fine guy to be around, slower and not as steady as before, but probably lots more compassionate and observant than he was in his high flying NYC days. D has a couple of parrots that he dotes on and we love him because he can always be counted on to try something new and expansive. One of those people who, despite a major health setback, is aging graciously, consciously and well, D has learned practical new ways to befriend the gods who sustain life and make it rewarding.

A favorite poem from Practical Gods reminds of one small but luminously important thought: We each have our own versions of the practical and available gods who love us, and when we listen we can hear them beguiling and cajoling us to remember there are always future possibilities, awakenings, epiphanies as new realities beckon.

The God Who Loves You

It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you’d be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.

It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week–
Three fine houses sold to deserving families–

Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you’d have been allotted

Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.

A life thirty points above the life you’re living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.

You don’t want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day’s disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.

And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You’d have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you’re used to.

And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.

Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You’re spared by ignorance?

The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,

Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven’t written in months.

Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you’ve witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you’ve chosen.

Melanie Lee is an award-winning writer, editor, artist and author. Growing up in Texas, she read mostly biography and autobiography and dreamed of being a writer who could help inspire others to meet their muse by honoring beauty in everyday life. She holds degrees in languages and journalism and was a features editor and columnist, writing everything from lifestyle stories and business news to profiles of entrepreneurs, artists and inventors engaged in the creative pursuit of right livelihood. She lived for ten years in Northern New Mexico where she was creator and director of Sojourns Writing Workshops of Santa Fe.

At the second half of life she moved to Sedona with her husband Louis Michalski. She met her muse anew, took up painting, became a yoga teacher and avid hiker and wrote “A Year in Sedona~Meeting the Muse at Wisdom’s Edge“,  available on Amazon.com or from the author. She can be contacted at 
P.O. Box 1419   Sedona, AZ  86339 or  atwisdomsedge@gmail.com