Homecoming The camera is trained on the door, no one in the frame, only the dog sleeping. And then finally, I see this was to surprise you, filming your arrival, the dog's delight. Only now, six years distant, can this seem scripted, meant: the long, blank minutes she waited, absent but there — behind the lens — as though she directs me to notice the motion of her chest in the rise and fall of the frame, and hear to understand the one cough, nothing, the clearing of her throat. Then, at last, you come home to look into the camera she holds, and past her into me — invisible, unimagined other who joins her in seeing through our transience the lasting of desire. Claudia Emerson