WAITING FOR THE MUSE

Like most creative writers I experience periods of despondency when I become convinced that I will never again write anything of consequence and that whatever small talent I may once have possessed has been squandered or extinguished by time.
During our recent trip to Venice, we once again lodged at our beloved Ca' Biondetti, the home of celebrated 18th Century Italian artist, Rosalba Carriera, and more recently the American novelist, Henry James. 
The apartment consists of a number of rooms on the ground floor of the old house whose windows look out on the Grand Canal where much of the daily life of Venice takes place. I took this photograph during the annual Regatta whilst Jane and I sipped Bellinis and enjoyed the spectacle.
The list of artists and writers who have lived in or visited this uniquely beautiful city is substantial: Robert Browning, Josef Brodsky, Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton, Claude Monet, John Singer Sargent, Marcel Proust and John Ruskin, to name but a few.
It’s impossible to spend time in the tranquil setting of Ca' Biondetti, in the calming presence of Rosalba's gentle ghost, and not feel the long-absent muse return.  
Absence of a different sort is the subject of the next poem.

In Ca' Biondetti 2017 by Jane

ABSENCES

I switch on lamps as daylight fades,
draw blinds against approaching night.
Dogs start to bark, cats start to prowl.
As silence settles down like dust
the endless day begins to end.
Slow clock hands creep. Four walls encroach.
The ceiling, like a flower-press,
weighs on my shoulders, drains from me
my spirit, breath, my energy,
while, in the mirror, nothing lives.
I pour a drink, pick up a book,
sit in my chair opposite yours
but cannot concentrate to read
so close my eyes and try instead
to bear your absence like a wound
that I'm assured will surely mend.
Indeed it will, I know, for when
a week from now, with speeding heart,    
I greet you from a landed plane
we will, of course, be reconciled.
Such temporary absences
provide a terrifying glimpse
of what bereavement must entail:
the agony of injured time;
the futile days that never end.
The ghosts that linger after death
are those the dead have left behind
who wander lost in empty rooms, 
companions now with tears and dust:
the living that are not alive.