This couple I know have an anniversary coming up. They live close by, and for the occasion, as a gift, I would like to
give them something I made.
I have a lot of ideas. None of
them any good. Ideas present themselves, like suitors with pink roses, and each
one seems so right until it doesn’t.
It’s easy to fall in love, even
with an idea. Johannes Kepler fell in love with the idea that planets travel in a perfect, circular path.
The planetary path is an ellipse; truth prevailed, but Kepler's heart was broken.
Andrew Wyeth fell in love with an idea he could paint the wind,
and he did; “Wind from the Sea” depicts the inside view of an open attic window, as the wind blows a tattered lace curtain into the room.
Wyeth said it was a portrait of Christina Olson, a friend who lived close by. Stricken with polio as a child, Christina
lost the use of her legs. “Wind from the Sea”, Wyeth said, is symbolic of both
her delicacy, and her strength.
Ideas present themselves, they bat
their eyes and giggle. It’s easy to fall in love with an idea. I had an idea I could make a gift as perfect as a circle. Beautiful as the
wind in a lace curtain.
Truth prevailed; I wrote silly words instead. My hands rolled out ideas and shaped them into pretzels. But in my dreams the
words were there, like daisies in a field. The words to say I see in both of
you a delicacy, and strength.
In both of them, I mean. Those
people who live close by.
It’s hard to say how you really
feel, when people live close by.