“
Now reading
The Well
The Muse in her dark habit, trim-waisted, wades into deep water. The spring where she will fill her pitcher to the brim wells out below the lake's surface, among papyrus, where a stream enters the lake and is crossed by the bridge on which I stand. She stoops to gently dip and deep enough. Her face resembles the face of the young actress who played Miss Annie Sullivan, she who spelled the word 'water' into the palm of Helen Keller, opening the doors of the world. In the baroque park, transformed as I neared the water to Valentines, a place of origin, I stand on a bridge of one span and see this calm act, this gathering up of life, of spring water and the Muse gliding then in her barge without sails, without oars or motor, across the dark lake, and I know no interpretation of these mysteries although I know she is the Muse and that the humble tributary of Roding is one with Alpheus, the god who as a river flowed through the salt sea to his love's well so that my heart leaps in wonder. Cold, fresh, deep, I feel the word water spelled in my left palm.