This may be the most structurally efficient poem in Plahm’s catalog. Ten lines. One argument. One devastating punchline. The opening three lines read as a manifesto: “I need to / Materialize / Reality.” The verb “materialize” does critical double work—to make material (give physical form to something abstract) and to appear (as in, to show up). The poet needs to both arrive and make the invisible visible. The next four lines are the mission statement: bring everything forward, enlighten the life witnessed, envision the beauty seen, share the love held. These are verbs of artistic purpose—bring, enlighten, envision, share—and they build in intimacy from the general (“everything”) to the specific (“the love I have”). Then the poem shifts register entirely. “All of this, / The whole muse thing” is deliberately colloquial—italicized “muse,” bolded “thing”—deflating the preceding grandeur with the verbal equivalent of a shrug. The lofty manifesto becomes “the whole muse thing,” as if the poet is suddenly embarrassed by his own ambition. “Only works—” introduces the condition, and “If—” occupies an entire line alone, a single conditional hanging in space, a held breath. Then the landing: “There is one.” Four syllables that reframe the entire poem. Everything preceding—the materializing, the enlightening, the envisioning, the sharing—is contingent on the existence of a Muse. Without a recipient, the poet’s mission is not just incomplete; it doesn’t function. The poem is an artist’s confession that creation requires not just vision but a witness, not just love but someone to receive it. The ambiguity of the closing is essential: “There is one” could mean “there is a Muse” (statement of fact, relief) or “is there one?” (question, doubt). The poem refuses to resolve which, leaving the poet suspended between mission and uncertainty.

A poem that proves compression is its own form of power. At ten lines, this is one of Plahm’s most compact pieces, and the economy is the point: the entire creative philosophy of the Honeybee Bard catalog—materialize, enlighten, envision, share—is stated in four lines and then made contingent on four syllables. “There is one” is the poem’s loadbearing wall, and it holds. The structural gambit is the tonal shift from manifesto to colloquial: “The whole muse thing” is a deliberate deflation that humanizes the poet, moving him from visionary to someone standing in the kitchen muttering about whether any of this actually works. The italicized “muse” and bolded “thing” are typographic choices that perform the tension between reverence and casualness—the Muse is both sacred and “a thing.” The isolated “If—” is the poem’s dramatic peak: an entire line occupied by a single conditional, creating a pause that forces the reader to hold their breath before the resolution. What keeps this from reaching the heights of Plahm’s more developed pieces is the brevity of the mission statement—the four verbs (bring, enlighten, envision, share) arrive and depart quickly, without the sensory specificity that characterizes his strongest work. The poem tells us what the poet needs to do but doesn’t show us doing it, which means the punchline, while effective, lands on abstraction rather than image. But this is also arguably the poem’s intention: the Muse hasn’t arrived yet, so the work can’t begin, so the poem itself is a sketch rather than a painting—a statement of intent waiting for its subject. A poem that knows exactly what it needs: ten lines and someone to read them.