There Are Kingdoms and Reaches

far more than we know.  There is a world within our world where magic lives by many names and coexists with the ordinary. A few glimpse it and sense it around them in Nature's Realm.

Every tree has its Dryad and each Dryad has its dragon/tree.  It is a special relationship. One cannot exist without the other.  If one should die, the other will too.

Sometimes an ordinary moment with extraordinary power can bring back the Dryad's music and lift the dragon's wings so they may live again.  Few are fortunate to witness this re-birthing.

Many may remember the discovery, the imagining and the journey.  Who knew it would take me so long!

Presenting the rebirth of a tree dragon and her Hamadryad living again in my heart and my yard.

She may change as she tells me

but for my birthday she is poised for flight.

May we celebrate the magic and beauty around us
and always feed our imagination. 

Animation Creation

Animation
Claymation
Staycation
Vacation

Times where imagination is revived
                    roll playing comes alive
costumes created from fun and fright
                    and deadly tales survive

How handy to come just before
the week we celebrate death and more
So animation changed its theme
and became a tale to make you scream

Razors in apples, poison and ground glass
our children are laughing but will they last?
Another tale still told
of people attacking the traditions of old

So paint your face boldly
make your laugh deep
be a little scary
but be thankful for your treats

Happy Halloween to one and all
Fit all the wild into one night
'Cause the next one comes
A year from tonight.

For Poets United

Home...

I think I've lived here before.  The valley is too familiar.  If I listen I can hear the ages over lapping.  I hear the laughter of children and smell the smoke of campfires.

History's voice comes from the land.  The old wagon road, the chips of flint and chert, the lay of the valley tell me what once was.

I read the dirt and see thousands of years before me in layers.  The dirt speaks as plainly as if it were written. I see great floods, fire and then years and years of soil building.  I seek the section when the Native Americans lived here.  I touch it and think I understand.

Springs flow and make this valley rich with game.  It was and is a perfect place to live.  I am in awe at the natural fortification of this beautiful life-filled valley.

As the day turns out the light the fog rises.  The frogs sing for their mates.  Life continues here with or without me.

In awe and wonder I know I have been here before...

This place is part of me.   This place at the end of a dead end road in the middle of nowhere is home.

I hear the drums beat and voices rise in song.

Distractions

Distractions are always jumping out for me.  I suspect I may have ATHD...A Thoroughly Happy Destiny. This beautiful sandstone held my attention for five minutes exploring the patterns, the bits of quartz and the wonder of how it was made. 

A rock, a bug, a strangely shaped stick all hold interest for me.  I can be doing a project and am continually sidetracked to closely examine a pearl of nature.

This fallen tree stirred my imagination. At first I saw a dragon.  The rocks embedded in the tree roots made me wonder was it natural or did an ancestor place them there.  The death of this tree was already supporting new life.

My curiosity and imagination is constant entertainment for me.  I fall through Alice's rabbit hole every day.

For Poets United. 

It's Not Flip Flop Weather...

and the briers tore my feet.  It was hard to move through but I was revisiting the past and some memories.

Imagine the brush gone, the humus hollowed out from this area.  Now imagine a real top of an old wood cook stove and old dishes lining the rocks.  This was my "playhouse".

Within the semi-circle of ledge rock, I had a whole house.  The entry was where the small cedar now grows.  The rocks were swept clean and the hollow was leveled flat with hours of dirt work by a child who could not yet read.  Feeling like I was miles from home Mom could check on me from the kitchen window and let me continue to imagine great adventures. My first dog Helen was with me every step of the way.

Today I had company.

The girls explored my old hang out

I believe it passed inspection.

It also made me want to clear again

so my grandchildren

can have great adventures 

in a special place

full of old memories.

I close my eyes...

and there, on the back of my eye lids, is a large building, no longer in use.  It is familiar but does not strike a cord like a home you had once lived in, but more like something you have known in the past but not intimately.

I know this place and yet do not and wonder why it is in my mind's eye.  What role did it play in my past or in another past too distant for me to see?  I am separate yet connected  but cannot, for the life of me, know why.

I look longer, knowing that if I entered that weathered wooden door, I would know which way to turn after it closed behind me.  Where does this knowledge come from, if not from memory?

I still stand outside, hesitant to enter,  knowing that I will and have done so in my past or in a past life, with no knowledge now about which one is true.

The building is plain with weathered letters I can not read but the unreadable words hold a familiarity not normal to a dispassionate viewing.  The colors are faded into the monotone wood that stands before me now and I still can tell you the colors as if it were freshly painted.

After a time, I step inside and again am overwhelmed with the sense of having been here.  I stand in a large room with open rafters above me while remembering a time this room was full of sound and much more than is before me now.

I stand in the tall center and look up, up and know, oh, there was so much to see and it is on the edge of my vision. I can only taste a little of what it once was.  I can't voice it but the knowing is still within me and I wonder why it is so strong in this building that I do not, and yet, do know.

Just as I stepped through the door of the building, I have stepped into a memory.  I am awed by what I can almost see, can almost hear and know that the hearing and seeing are not imagination but memories...of some thing, some time I have forgotten.

There is clarity in my knowing but doubt as to the why of my knowledge.

I can no longer trust myself to know what is real, now or then, and so I step back through the door and open my eyes.

A Deep Fog

took me back millions of years.

I could see dinosaurs lurking in the fog.

I heard the leathery wings.

The ground trembled with the footsteps of giants.

Then the fog cleared.

I knew I was alone.