Muse/muse

by Anna

I came back here this year just for you, you said, and these were not idle words, I think, carried out to me on your delightful delighted smile, and through those earnest, too young eyes. In the summary of your life for a year - not once mentioning the house that was purchased, the dogs who came along, the woman who waits even now in that house for your return, the dogs coursing out to meet and adore you anew, to sniff all the new strange scents you bring back with you, on you— you tell only of a trip to Indonesia. This is interesting, impressive, I will like to hear this of you, you will like saying it to me and watching my eyes for interest in another, larger side of you; and then, the gift of admission: you thought of me there, picked up pieces of the place in your hand and wondered at my reaction and appreciation of them, wondered how you might reproduce them in your work to make me say how you have grown and become a god of your medium. But the woman was there, walking all the while beside you; she watched you lift each item, each artifact, and did not know you thought of anything but furthering the life you two have in that home and in the studio you deny her sometimes so that you can be the real you and she can love what she has helped you to become. You will go back, with your smile and your tales and your desire to show the beautiful to someone who does not adore you, who lives entirely outside and far away from your day and your house and the awful security of love. Go; use these yearnings you require to turn wood and steel into wind and water and birds in flight; do not fail to love those dogs, and try to see the woman who is there.

6S

Anna, author of Fall Home, is writing again after 17 years in the doldrums. We're happy about that.