blissful, stupid flow

chasing the muse's will-o'-the-wisp

waves at Acadia National Park, my photo

blissful, stupid flow, I long for you like 
a dry mouth yearns for water on a hot day. 
I chase you, the flickering phantasm 
of creativity, leading me with 
seductive foxfires deeper into the dark 

places of the night. Burning blue lights dance 
before me down the late paths of murky 
midnights, a little more and a little 
more and a little more and the elusive 
Muse will be mine. My intoxicating 

draught, my river on which I'm carried away 
from myself — and my daytime brooding 
and anxiety — into the kingdom 
of words, the subterranean empire 
of ideas. Oh how you lure me from sleep,

tempt me to just a little more and 
a little more, sure that the alchemy
is about to happen, the miraculous 
transubstantiation where my words 
achieve eternal life. O cricket song, 

O seductive stars, O ever-changing, 
ever-elusive moon, never the same 
from one night to the next. How can I write
your charms or transcribe the secret languages 
you whisper amongst yourselves in the shadows? 

Oh trees and bare branches of trees and leafy 
branches of trees, O tempest tossed and breeze 
blown and still, how you quiver at every 
subtle breath and how I long to be moved 
as you are moved by the blowing spirit 

of inspiration. How I want to be 
enlivened, quivering, pulsing with life, 
with words, flowing like a torrent in me 
and through me, around me, dotting the blank 
banks of the page with all the carried debris 

of my scattered thoughts, strewn by the flood— 
portentous, undecipherable wrack. 
How I long for the secret hieroglyphs, 
the dumb runes, and close-mouthed ideograms 
to open themselves, open their sacred

mysteries, their meanings. Oh I could be 
the high priestess interpreting the fogs 
and smokes, I could chant delphic oracles 
and sing sybylline songs. Only open 
my lips, O Lord, and inspire my pen, 

send the electric pulses flowing 
to my fingers and I will write your praises
in glowing words. Oh make me your instrument, 
sharpen me, your quill. Or, if you will not, 
free me from the enchantment that chains me 

to this post, trying to transcribe the siren 
song that will drown me. Give me, Lord, not
the illusion of wisdom, but the wisdom 
to know when I should speak and when I should 
seek and when I should give myself over
to the sweet arms of sleep. 

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Composition Notes

This poem was inspired by combining two different prompts. It was intended just to be a writing exercise, but I rather like the way it came out.

The first prompt, “flow” was on a slip of paper drawn from my prompt mug. Many of the prompts in the mug are from

Kortney Garrison

’s various one word prompt lists. Some have been gleaned from other sources like Inktober prompts.

This mug sits next to my bed and I most often use it with my oldest son when he and I do a daily haiku practice. We draw one word and each attempt a haiku based on the word. I like the way the word often acts like a catalyst, crystalizing the images and ideas that have been stewing in my head, giving them a seed to grow around. But I also grab a word at other times when I’m feeling a writing itch.

The second prompt, “blissful, stupid” came from

Lily Tobias

’s Fragments project, which I participated in last year. (My Fragments poem was called Start Light). I saved the fragments in an envelope, thinking I wasn’t quite done with them yet and found the envelope while tidying up the other day.

The three words together became a phrase, “blissful, stupid flow”.

Flow makes me think of the creative flow state, the wonderful hyperfocus that sometimes comes when I’m writing, where the words seem to come from elsewhere, pouring through me, and onto the paper or the screen. Nothing else exists outside of the writing and connections seem to form themselves, one idea and image leading to the next and then the next and then the next.

I’m much more likely to be able to enter flow state late at night when everyone else in the house is asleep. That’s when my brain wakes up and also when there are less likely to be distractions and interruptions. I’ve stayed up far too late far too many nights because flow is like a drug that my brain can’t get enough of. I know I will regret it in the morning when I will be tired and stupid and useless, but in the moment the flow is all.

I believe that my writing is a gift, a divine blessing. But it’s also a talent in the Biblical sense of something entrusted to my care to make something of for God’s ends, and not only for my own pleasure. I have an obligation to use it for good and not to let it waste unused. But I also have an obligation to use it responsibly and to not let it get in the way of my more primary obligations to my family. Sometimes seeking flow can become an idol, an end in itself instead of a means to an end. I like the way this poem wrestles with the calling and the temptation and in the end becomes something like a prayer.

The image of the seductive will-o'-the-wisps came most immediately from the beginning of Dracula, which my second daughter and I started to read this week.

Suddenly, away on our left, I saw a faint flickering blue flame. The driver saw it at the same moment; he at once checked the horses, and, jumping to the ground, disappeared into the darkness. I did not know what to do, the less as the howling of the wolves grew closer; but while I wondered the driver suddenly appeared again, and without a word took his seat, and we resumed our journey. I think I must have fallen asleep and kept dreaming of the incident, for it seemed to be repeated endlessly, and now looking back, it is like a sort of awful nightmare. Once the flame appeared so near the road, that even in the darkness around us I could watch the driver's motions. He went rapidly to where the blue flame arose—it must have been very faint, for it did not seem to illumine the place around it at all—and gathering a few stones, formed them into some device. Once there appeared a strange optical effect: when he stood between me and the flame he did not obstruct it, for I could see its ghostly flicker all the same. This startled me, but as the effect was only momentary, I took it that my eyes deceived me straining through the darkness. Then for a time there were no blue flames, and we sped onwards through the gloom, with the howling of the wolves around us, as though they were following in a moving circle.

And also has echoes of the wisps in Brave, one of my favorite animated films. I love how the wisps in the movie appear to Merida as a portent and foreshadowing at the beginning when she is just a little girl and then again when she’s older they lead her to the witch’s hut. Disney’s wisps feel ominous, but turn out to be— helpful? maybe? As with most supernatural interventions, things get worse before they get better.

And I suppose I was also thinking of the Japanese fox spirits in Hiroshige’s print New Year's Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Ōji, a print that has inspired me to write poems before. I am fascinated that in both Japanese and English foxes are associated with eerie supernatural glows. Foxfire. Kitsunebi. It seems to be almost a direct translation, though I think they might refer to two different bioluminescent phenomena.

Since I’m thinking of it, why not share the print and the poems as well?

New Year's Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Ōji, Metropolitan Museum.

Midnight— foxes gather
beneath bare trees
breathing flames

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pale ghost foxes
have breathed out all their fire
to warm midnight air

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midnight meeting—
phantom foxes fade
as foxfire flares

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a pale conflagration—
foxes breathing foxfire

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What about you?

Have you ever seen a wisp?

Do you personify your poetic Muse?

Are you also addicted to flow?

What things in your life are both blissful and stupid at the same time?

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