If you don't know this poet, you should. I met her at Djerassi, a wonderful northern California artist colony, a few years ago. This poem is one of my favorites!
Dedication
by Maurya Simon, from Days of Awe
If ever I had a muse, it was you,
your artist’s hands narrow and white,
your eyes so amazingly blue
they seem to overtake the world
and re-tinge it; your familiar face
always hovering in and out of mine.
A certain violence in likenesses,
and in our differences, makes
you my most solid witness—
and at times you’re the only door
my being passes through, as if
through a curtain made of flesh
that parts us each in two, splitting
us into yin and yang, those forces
eternally at odds, and at one.
There are things to say that we
have never said, and are likely
to forget or softly put away
along with the old arguments,
the jealousies and dreads.
But let me say, if anything,
that you’re my telltale tongue,
my luminous eye, my fountain pen.
I owe you everything that’s good
upon the page, and even my rage
over what’s bad, false, leaden.
If I can claim but one truth won,
it’s that you gave me first what
I didn’t have: another self to love
Unconditionally, and to forgive.
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