Beyond

Magpie Tale 122
shared with dVerse

I found a doorway this afternoon
Or maybe it was a window.
I thought the rain left only mud
But there it was, untouched and new.
A forest growing clear and strong
And I could hear the music in its leaves.
It seemed a shame to pass it by
Unexplored and left in memory’s drawer.
So I unlocked the door and went in
Or fell through the window, I do not know.
But I spent the hours there
And met the birds and every flower.
Danced with fairies and joined their feasts
Stopped in a tree and spoke with owls.
I met a unicorn too, and laughed under silver stars
And by their light returned home again.
Without locking the door
Or perhaps I didn’t close the window.
Never will I cease to look
For doorways and windows.
I’ll find them again I know
Beyond the mud to worlds untouched and new.

Paper

Magpie Tale 121
shared with dVerse

Paper

Blinding white, unknown
Like a new blanket of snow.
There is a beauty
To the freshness,
Weeping for the first footprint,
Splattering of black ink.

Yet there is no snowman
Without the footprint
No story without
The invasion of words

Words conquering the page
But gently.
Caressing the paper,
Greeting it friendlike.
Twining white and black together
Like rose and trellis

Until the paper
Sheds its skin of white.
Emerging butterfly
Glorious in color
Made from black and white.

What to Do in a Bottle

Magpie Tale 115

I was bored. After all, I’d only read the same book a few thousand times, maybe a million, maybe more. I flipped another page, taking care to turn it from the top. The next page I’d turn would be from the bottom, after that I’d go for the one seventy-eighth mark. When turning pages is all you do for centuries, you get picky about how you do it.

It had been a great book once, before I had it memorized and could quote every word of the text. Now it was dull and about some guy with a genie doing impossible feats. Once that genie had been me. I guess I should have known reading about myself would get boring after the first century. If I’d even been in here a century.

I guess that’s the worst thing about being a genie in a bottle. Time slips away from you. It wasn’t so bad when my bottle was new and I a freshly caught genie. Oh, I’d been angry and fearsome then. I’d fly screaming out of the bottle, hissing insults and trying to turn the tables on those who called themselves my master. Then I missed my first two hundred years of history. After that I learned to scream with joy when the seal on my bottle was broken. I’d been a busy genie, granting wishes, building golden castles and destroying them again. And then nothing.

Sometimes, I’m not sure why, I can get a glimpse of the world outside my bottle. I’m not sure if this makes confinement worse, or if it eases the monotony to see something new. Either way, from what I’ve seen, and because of all this water that keeps leaking in, I’m at the bottom of the sea.

So I was bored. Until I felt my bottle move. I’ve gotten good at telling what moves my bottle. Sea tides, an animal, a human hand. This was a hand. I strained to hear sounds from the outside world. There was something about a shipwreck recovery and learning about an age gone by. They were excited about my bottle, wondering how old it was. Older than the ship they guessed. What’s inside I heard them ask.

Now I’m just waiting for my bottle to be opened. There will be great deeds for me to do once more. And before I get sealed away again, I’m going to bring a lot more books.