She

I found her in La Jolla, in a shop by a pelican sea. They wrapped her like a mummy and sent her home to me and now she stands, a sentinel by the window, watching for the golden finch, watching for the peonies to break from the ground.

She's my muse; I've named her She. It's her eyes that I study when I am lost. For what they might see, for how they see, for what they might direct me to. Faces are one thing. Eyes are another. True beauty, I think, lies in the eyes.

Just now, at the other window, two robins are at work on their nest, a prideful enterprise. The broken stalks of last year's ornamental grass are being turbaned about a post beside a gutter.