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.