“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings The dog poked its head beyond the threshold of the glass windows and wood of the front door …
Lightbulbs: A Drabble
She wasn’t a Betty. Or a Betsy. Not even a Milly, a Molly or a Mandy. Certainly not a Mary or a Charlotte. Catherine was too pretentious and Elizabeth, too grand. No, she was just Terry. This is all learned the third time I met her. Directly, anyway. Though even as I say third time, …
Quiet Destiny: Delphi
(An old post, transferred from my now cold blog, Introvert in the Corner). At one point, humans saw this city turned more village, with accompanying attractions these days, as the centre of the world. A modern Delphic home. Athens might have been the seat of power but Delphi predicted who would sit in it. …
Castaway
Look. If you only listen, step quiet and stop. Peer through the shutters, out into the night.
There exist worlds only wished for from the tips of fingers.
Can you find one?
If you do, step light, look far and near or you might find yourself falling through a crack you never meant to touch.
The Lighthouse
Above the clouds, with the stars, sits a lighthouse full of books which wrap around the winding staircase until the tower’s peak hits the ceiling of the universe.
At this peak is a light which shines through a window. A long trail of gold which glitters brighter than any pot at a rainbow’s end. Those are just illusions you know. But this light, this light is real.
When you look out your window, in the corner of your house, or glance at the lamp at the end of the street, that light you see, flashing from the edge of your eye, that is the trail which tracks from every planet in every galaxy, right back to the small window at the peak of the lighthouse.
So when you greet the new year, the new day, the new hour, look up above the clouds, with the stars. You might just spot the lighthouse.
When We Built Airships
In every history lived a little girl or boy who found a book.
It’s pages crinkled and curled over, hugging the faded ink scrawled across and spilled into a story. A story which rose up around the child in the form of warriors and airships, kraken and unicorns, castles and cliff edges where wit and rapier crossed.
Deep in the curve of caverns and under the sunny seas, these children leapt into exploration. Because of curiousity.
Until one day, they found a loose scrap of paper. Pink maybe or blue, one of the sticky note squares their parents used to decorate the refrigerator with.
These squares told them what they needed to do. It gave them a quest toward fame and fortune. Go to school it said. Get a job it said. Find a partner it said. Get a house it said. Have children it said.
The children went to school. They left their books under a pile of reality. Delving into new worlds, still clinging to curiousity.
Until one day someone said these children spent too much time imagining. They were lazy. They did not know how to work. Even if they wore suits and fetched coffees for bosses. They only had thoughts and no skills.
The children turned away from these square people who lived when imagination was not a universe of pixels stringing paperback to backpacks.
They returned to their books. They built an airship, they fashioned a compass and they found a map. They took to the skies and disappeared in the clouds, among the million flocks of birds with the same brown wings.
Their history passed down to friends who built airships and a few family members too but caught, between the curve of each word settled the quiet meow of a cat, as it fell asleep next to another book.
There Be Musketeers
She came riding to the sound of high noon, stirring a sleeping barn owl and sent the inn in an uproar. Her rapier hilt flashed against the wheat field as thigh high boots clumped over the rain muddied path. As the wind ran through leaves, her voice commanded.
“I am here on the King’s business.”
Keys Within the Kingdom to Create the World From: A Drabble
Whosoever held the kingdom’s key, stood at the crest of the cliff, where sea meets sky. The world dropped into a palm and sat in the skin of temptation, ready ever and always, to fly up to Polaris in the shape of a wren. Cut from the same string as the pen which scratched the lettered prison and pressed the wax seal over the kingdom’s key.
Misery Loves the View of Company: A Lonely Poem
Gather around, Misery. Let’s play murder. To start, we want them young. Let’s relieve you of your burden. That parasite. Eats you to death. Let’s watch them grow into thin. Twirl, ballerina, twirl. Fall as Ophelia fell. Let’s dance off the edge of the skyline. The news said you shone. Brilliant. Down to the murk …
If I Could Wander the Earth as a Duck: A Poem for Dreamers
Duck Dreams
If I could wander the Earth as a duck
I would keep swimming until I’d waddle.
Waddle and waddle. To make humans laugh.
That’s all I’d want. To make humans laugh.
To share a piece of their world.
From my wet, wobbly corner of quacks.
I will keep wandering until I find one.
A duck friend. To make a quack orchestra with.
To swim two by two. To waddle then and more.
If I could wander the Earth as a duck.
I would keep on swimming.