JOHN WINKWORTH. This is no cuckoo clock, old man

Hinge, American Decorative Arts

Medium: Wrought iron

Gift of Mrs. J. Insley Blair, 1949 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

She asked if I wanted to hear a poem she’d written when she was younger. (At what age, she couldn’t remember) She then recited it from memory. I had her repeat it several times so I could get all the words right:  

Long ago I met a traveller from an antique land. I know not her name and I forget her face, but she was clad in a cloak of trodden moss and wore socks spun from spider silk. I met her at the lee of a weathered oak during a time when life for me seemed wanting and my soul knew not which road to take. So there we stood for what seemed a great while, two wanderers above a sea of fog. We spoke of bird song and the promises of spring, of foreign worlds and journeys to the stars, of great migrations and eldritch caves and the space between thought and action.

We fell into a silence then, but it would be me who broke it: “How do I become a famous chicken blogger?” My question seemed barely there, so close it was to being carried away by the wind.

“For that, young stranger,” my companion said in a voice like clear glass and still water. “I have two words and an order.” Though their color is lost to me now, her eyes seemed alight with a muted fire. “The latter is simple, and it is to keep your Android camera at the ready at all times. Your watch will be long and it will be constant. Do not fear it.”

“Yes, absolutely,” I said, feeling strangely breathless. “And the two words?”

By then she was already turning away from me and the oak and into the twisting valley. The fog below us swirled.

But two words she did speak: