A Reluctant Muse

 Muse Reluctant

   Some days one's muse is quiet, maybe enlightening another writer/painter. The muse who visits my studio on occasion has been away for a while. It's time for her to come back. 

       The studio, moved to the backyard of our house in town from the yard of a cotton gin, proudly began life as a cotton buyer's office, then was abused as a storage place for not needed but "too good to pitch" furniture, then a deposit for used textbooks, bank statements, chairs with less then four legs, tricycles and hat boxes (remember those?) and finally a fine home for spiders and their kin,
mice, and squirrels.

   Our sons flew in from Seattle and Atlanta to surprise their Mama and hang and paint sheet rock, help their Dad build a porch onto the Cotton House, and enjoy Cypress Corner barbecue.  

   The boys' Mama, freed from canvases, paints, and bushes all over the kitchen table and counters, began to paint in the "new place", often to the raucous and inimitable sound of Preservation Hall or Randy Newman. The muse came often then, granting the painter with ideas and the best color combinations, even initiating good sales. Heck, this painting thing was good. It was fine!
                                                        However. Muses are as individual as the creators they might serve. They are prone to wander. They are beautiful things but not often reliable, though the real truth may be that the artists/writers/inventors they serve are themselves not always present.

  So, Muse, I plead guilty to presuming I had no need of you.

  Come back to Cotton House Studio.
.


I miss you. 
              I need you.