For the last month,
Elizabeth,
my muse,
has been on leave.

Hell!
She deserves it,
inspiring me,
for years
as she has.

She caught a zephyr to Greece
to dig among the ruins for archetypes,
to search Aegean shores for shells and metaphors.

Meanwhile,
my creative juices
have not been flowing
in any meaningful direction,

-until yesterday –

when I felt the addict-poets need
for a hit of electric rhyme,
for current, sparking in my mind,
for the hum of creating…

So,

I decided to construct poetry
without my muses
jump-start in my brain.

Art
can be born through struggling labor,
cementing brick and block with mortar
to build a poem,

just as
Beauty
will begin
with Elizabeths soft whisper
of an opening line,
or
an image shivering my spine,
her breath, warm in my ear,
her tongue, liquid on my skin.

So, my dear,
study Zorba’s pragmatic philosophy.
Sip ouzo with his progeny.
Play the ancient songs on his santouri.

We will resume the last tango
we were dancing
once your Grecian odyssey
is done.