Pickle Poem

Speak a rhyme of pickling

A bucket full of brine

Thirty-seven cucumbers

Fallen from the vine.

When the jars were opened

The pickles they did hatch,

And out swam tiny silver fish

That nobody could catch.

Meet Grace

Sometimes you just need to see your character.

Fireflies

Excerpt from a story I'm working on:

“Hush, now, Master Baker,” the Lady stilled the rabbit's rush of words, “A human man, you say? Or, perhaps, a frog? News indeed... they do not usually venture so far into our forest. Let us go to him and see what there is to see.” She scooped the rabbit up in her arms and stood again in the center of the mushroom ring. She shimmered faintly in the starlight, then sparkled as if fireflies were trapped beneath her skin, and then the sparkling was outside of her, surrounding her like a swarm of stars which twinkled and sparkled and faded away, leaving only the stillness of the night, the quiet shadows beneath the trees and the mushrooms bathed in starlight.

Backward nursery rhyming

Grumble, goblin, blue

What's a king to do?

Over ground and

Underground

And deep beneath the zoo.

There he met a mighty troll

Who wouldn't tie his shoes:

He tripped and broke his meaty head

And set his minions loose.

The Red Shoes

        Sylvester found the shoes on the beach, left behind by the tide with the driftwood. The white laces were twisted together and tangled with seaweed, the red canvas stained dark with the sea and spotted with the muck of the shore. He slipped his flippers into them anyway. The soggy soles squelched beneath his skin.

        “Look at me!” He cried to the other seals, “I'm a human!” He wobbled along the beach, trying to prance as he'd seen the humans do, red sneakers flashing on the sand. The other seals barked with laughter. Slipping his flippers out of the soggy shoes, Sylvester sighed: the cool sand of the beach felt so much nicer on his skin. What silly creatures humans are, he thought, and abandoning the red shoes, he gave a happy bark and dove into the sea.

Pocket story

There is a pocket in my purple jumper: it's a magic door. Mother says I should stop telling lies. But it's true, although I'm sure I don't know how. The other end must come out near the ocean, for my handkerchiefs always smell of salt and seaweed. And things I put in it for safekeeping often go missing, only to reappear in my pocket sometime later, damp and sandy. Mother says I need to learn to take better care of my things. This morning a small crab, green as bottle, crawled out. It hid itself in the potted begonia. Mother won't be happy.

Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time there was a story.  It was a little thing, small enough to hide under a chair or inside a tea cup, but it was powerful all the same.  It could be warm and fuzzy with gray green fur or form into a dark blue blob and slide itself under doors.

It said:
"Once upon a time, the world was created with words."

And that was enough.  It would curl up like a kitten at a child's feet and whisper, once upon a time, the world was created with words, and the child would start to dream of the words he knew and the world he could create and how things would be.  And the child would grow up and change the world with his words, creating a new world with each syllable.

And so many such children grew up, and so many such children created worlds with their words, but, alas, they had forgotten what the story had whispered to them and they did not know their own power.