Stone capped hillock

When I was raising kids, the lovelies, I had very little time to write songs, play guitar, send little postcards and play out. But I did both, kids and art, because of my inner drive. I’ll never know whether my children or I or both would be better off now had I never followed that drive. These compulsions don’t ask our approval and I, for one, seldom question their motives. But I’m doing it now.

Why, subconscious self, do you want to perform Bob Dylan songs? What do you plan to accomplish? What will satisfy you? When will you fold up shop?

Answer. You, dear writer, are an intellectual. I am a romantic. You seek facts, and assurances. I just want to make love. You count the beans while I am hanging out the billowed sheets of our sacred tryst on a stone capped hillock swept by the wind.

Underestimate me at your peril. Live in your tedious world if you will, but leave me out of it for I no more need your tireless second guessing than a hound needs a leash. I go to the wild unlikely because I have one thing everyone wants and only some find.

Freedom. From penny pinchers and dime storers, text messengers and mall reverers, head rovers and left overs. You, my perpetual judge and questioner, have no real jurisdiction over me. I muse, you refuse, and still I dream of musing.

Some would say I muse my way out of all the traps you lay for me, questioning my motives with your sane stare. Thinking you rule me with your quaint defunding of my grand assumptions, these - that beauty calls our divinity out of caves, that repetition in the artist’s hand yields truth, that you don’t need your mind’s permission to befriend me.

I’m here, with constancy. I’m here, with hungry contentment. I’m here, with pleasure in your awkwardness for I know, you came this far to ask me, and I know, you’ll stay.

Painting by Amadeo Modigliani, Porträt der Madame Reynouard