MacDowell

For once I fought back,
answering Oh yes, someday
when a restless muse asserted
This golden age needs treatment on the page.          
It was the strangest lesson—
all that ink to make me think
shadows were real, this silence 
when one true heart so manifestly was. 
Time passed. Themes amassed; 
I scoffed at amber, basked in oxygen.
Now in this little cabin
where no sightings slake my cravings
and my pen gets back its need to conjure,
on the ingots I have stored, oh pine, opine.

From Silver Roses by Rachel Wetzsteon. Copyright © 2010 by Rachel Wetzsteon. Used by permission of Persea Books.