Modern Muse

A thousand and one stories exist

In our personal book of fables.

Do we know our heart's desire

Or is it hidden in shadows of our mind?

Capricorn and Unicorn may be the signs

Of our future coming, or the designs

For our free will and imagination.

Well-traveled roads are not for us.

Hippo or Hippopotamus?

Miro or Degas?

A modern design on a chaotic canvas

Does not make our life more meaningful.

Pears, persimmon and lime --

Images we use to form

Our understanding of a sublime

View of nature -- our muse.

Hippo and Hippopotamus --

Creating images we dream

Of using them in life, not as a ruse,

But with nature as its scheme.

Dear Ezra, you prophet,

You poet of modern states.

What icons have you left that

We can appropriate to our own fates?

- James Henderson, from Portraits, 1992 (2010)