To an Unlikely Muse

Like a seawall, you impede incoming tides of my words
And thus resist my swells, keeping the home whole, and dry.
There are bills to pay, and so I must go back out to sea
And be a fisher there for the daily catch of drudgery.

You are indifferent, I think, to the rhymes laid at your feet;
Ungrateful, for what could you do with them; we can't eat
Them, or send a kid to school with them; what good am I,
Who would bring you such a thing, it is absurd.

But perhaps when the storm blows over, and the waters
Are finally calm, you will see them as Erato, muse of love poems,
Born of ancient, pagan gods, and welcome as daughters
These frail things, swimming to shore, heads barely above the foam.