Muses

2.14.22

Muses
I would know you
I would know each of you
I would know of each of you
But I am blessed by your inattention
for I know you to be a cat’s poison
and a bird’s thorns

You’re a drug
the artist told me
and I think she might be right

But the poet said
you were the antidote
more than an analgesic
something that got to the root
of the only true evil in us

and treated
and treated
and treated until it retreated
unbeated but pushed back
making space for us to
think
and to think more clearly
if we have trained the skill of it

Muses, which is it?