Imagination: In Three Small Stories
One:
All through grammar school,
I imagined I was a deer, like Bambi,
moving through the woods, unseen,
silent as a leaf falling.
The shyest child ever,
and homely, too, with an impressive overbite,
coke-bottle glasses, and ten thousand freckles
I wanted nothing more than to be invisible...
So blending into the background
seemed like a good idea, to me.
It backfired, though.
Looking as I did, all while walking like a deer,
on a schoolyard (of all places)
I was noticed, all right;
for all the wrong reasons.
Imagination couldn’t make me invisible,
but it did, actually, save me.
When reality became difficult,
I’d simply disappear into the woods of my imagination.
A funny thing happened inside that safe place.
I became a watcher. And what I saw was this:
Everybody suffers. Even the meanest people.
Probably especially them. Some just hide it better than others.
This truth jolted me out of my self-consciousness.
We all struggle. We are all imperfect. Yet, we all belong.
I eventually quit trying to walk like a deer,
but sometimes, I still like to disappear in the woods.
~
Two:
Once I had a job that my heart refused to go to.
I tried to sweeten the pot,
tried to bring more soul and cheer into my work,
because I did needto go,
but my heart would lag behind
like a lazy, old dog.
Eventually, a bridge showed up
in my imagination,
it looked to be woven of flowers and vines,
pretty, but not remotely safe.
It did, however, lead from where I was,
to where I longed to be.
Each time I took a step onto that bridge
it lurched and swayed.
Still, the image held
and I wobbled across
one hesitant step at a time.
Sometimes, I look back and I wonder--
How can one cross an imaginary bridge?
I only know this--
now my heart wakes early,
alert as a hunting dog
ready for work,
every single day.
~
Three:
Four long years, I ranted over a President
who disregarded all that I hold dear,
among other things, air, water, and wild creatures.
Then came this year--epidemics, wildfires,
drought, sickness, isolation, and sorrow.
Politics grew more toxic by the day.
I felt scared, as well as angry. To keep the craziness at bay,
I began imagining a garden in the raw, scarred place
Where Joel and I had cleared dry brush for fire season.
I pictured it alive and blooming, filled with bees, and butterflies.
I’ve dug and planted, watered and mulched. And waited.
It has been nearly a year now. My “garden” looks like nothing much, at all.
Green smudges strewn and huddled in the dirt.
I suppose it is still winter,
For my garden, for the world.
But God, I think, takes interest in our struggles.
The rains arrived, at long last.
My first visitor too,
a “Mourning cloak,” flitted through the willows,
chocolate-brown wings
edged with ivory and blue.
Butterflies:
transformation. Hope. Life.
Imagine.
