Calliope sits on her favorite bench, at the edge of the park. No one notices her, not really, but all pass her eventually. She doesn’t say much to folks. Just waves her hand, and goes back to whatever she was preoccupied with. One man thinks he sees knitting, a child sees a snack. It doesn’t matter what she’s doing with her hands, because they move on anyway, and her eyes are on them all.

I have this image of Abraham Lincoln, on his giant dais at the monument. I am a child of our century and its imagery. While I know the fables of his life, I cannot place him anywhere but on a very large chair, sitting and watching, larger than life—literally.

The epic seeks this larger than life quality, the quality in which everything else fades away while we focus on a hero. Somehow, in that focus, the hero becomes history.

Calliope sits in front of a map. It’s configuration changes from year to year, as the continents move and dragons are replaced by land replaced by opportunity replaced by escape.

My vision is so minute that I cannot pan. I can not carry Odysseus across the ocean to home. In my world, he would drown. I can do sitcoms but not soap operas.

Yet these people live in my head, fixated on their moments. They come alive when exposed to words, to other writers. Listening to Lucille Clifton sends a person named Audrey onto a riff about rivers. Audrey either lives in my head or in Maine. You be the judge.

Calliope sits on a tapestry. It has knotted fringe at the edges. Or maybe those are just the threads unraveling and reweaving themselves.

I think that our culture is all set to rediscover the epic. Ask Lincoln.