Black Butterfly: Poems for a Muse

Bob Savino's rebirth occurred in the spring of his 31st year, during one of the dark nadir's of his existence, when he cried out a desperate, last-ditch prayer to the farthest reaches of the sentient void. In response, he was instantaneously catapulted from the depths of despair to the heights of ecstasy. Transfixed by an all-encompassing laser beam of Invisible Light; suffused with a Cosmic Joy he could neither comprehend nor doubt, he hung suspended outside space, beyond time-breaking through to a Greater Reality which transcended both his life and his death. Since then, inspired by this unforeseeable yet overwhelming mystical experience, Bob has followed the spiraling path of his own individual vision quest. All his poetry and artwork, directly or indirectly, bears witness to, and celebrates, this everunfolding spiritual awakening. These poems all were inspired by a muse, a woman who is also my beloved soul friend. Her secret name is "Black Butterfly." I've known her for many years, but recently we've taken a transforming journey together, an odyssey of rebirth threading straight through the eye of the Cosmic Needle. Along every step of this exploration she's been both spiritual companion and creative muse. These poems are the fruit of our personal collaboration-our communion of souls. In my profoundest personal experience, the living muse is an avatar of Psyche, the feminine aspect of the soul. Our age urgently needs to rediscover this illuminating muse/artist connection at a new level of transparency and understanding. The soul exists! It is each individual's innermost portal to Divinity, a conduit for the still, small, mysterious, ravishing, ecstatic murmur of the universe. Or maybe, it's just the barest flutter of a butterfly's wing...