So many poets, both modern and ancient,

remember to invoke the muses 

as they dance into the ballroom of poetry,

and almost none of them remember

to release you back into the world

after everyone celebrates the work.

English has so many words

for announcing our farewells,

yet few of them capture the need,

the opposite of an invocation,

where we thank the world for all the brainstorms

crashing against the shores of our concentration

while we look towards the borders of our creative reaches

and pray you will visit us again.

Whether our muses are spirits eternal

or starlit events that drip down on us from above,

they deserve our acknowledgement and attribution

so that their beads of wax might collect and form

other candles elsewhere.

Please accept my benediction

for this past month of making

that you need not have bestowed

on your most unworthy of supplicants.

Know that I will spend the rest of my sanity

looking for you in my daily life

to spare you from listening

for the harried calls of artists

too inane to tell you goodbye.