Your Small Bag

A Fantasy for Anne Where have you placed it? Perhaps in the Garden of Peace in your neighborhood, tended by old and young volunteers. If you placed it there on a quiet morning, with only the early birds accompanying you, it will shine brighter than the reddest rose petals, or display a light from within more penetrating than the light of sunflowers. Or did you wedge it carefully in the soft bark of a flowering tree so that breezes will fan the leaves over its secrecy? Of course, if you could stretch your arm and bend a branch of a poplar near the entrance, you could stash it in a wren's nest, nestled among her brown-spotted eggs. There are so many possibilities! Everyday you stop by the stream that flows past the Temple, and you bow your head for a moment of pure calm. You could safely place it between two rocks just below the rushing water. Such cleansing will keep your bag forever untarnished. Or you could pay homage to those you love, and put it in a bookcase in your home, in which each of those beloved relatives houses a favorite book that guides them safely and truthfully through their days and nights... But be careful not to imitate the behavior of squirrels I watch from my balcony. They stash their winter acorns all over my yard and then forget. In winter now they scurry everywhere in search of their lost food. Oh, beware especially of an unworthy poet, who has squandered her talent, made no effort to improve her skills, and misuses poems with words as weapons aimed against others. What if she finds your bag of inspiration? What if she steals what the Muse has given to you, and perverts those gifts? Oh, Anne, keep that bag - that precious gift every poet needs - close to your heart, where your truth and goodness reside. You have never required a disguise of your essential self. And your bag from the Muse requires no concealment. Reach inside it, take the first inspiration that curls around your hand, and bring it forth. We, your avid readers, will patiently wait for that next poem!