Here are examples of ways the fairies live in people’s lives. Enjoy.
A new poem by Mary Pratt, written after visiting my studio.
LABYRINTH
Red boards, white halls.
Posters and paint.
The inside of a piano.
A washer full of light.
Two stairways
to one long corridor.
You do not have a clue.
You do not need one.
If you are lost, cry out,
no doubt someone
will hear you.
You will always be found.
What you do
is up to you.
At the center—
no minotaur--
a glass door. Behind it,
earnest, commanding
fairies are waiting.
What did you expect?
Their Queen,
at first glance seems
innocent, unwinged.
Little do you know.
Her throne a desk.
Her wand a pen.
Enter at your peril.
Are you ready
to love the edges?
To practice not-doing?
Are you ready
to change your life?
-Mary Pratt
(It’s all true. Come visit.- emily)
Also by Mary and inspired by the ‘Fairy of Around the Edges of Oddness"‘
BACK TO THE EDGES OF ODDNESS
Since midsummer, fairies with green wings
twinkle around my eyes all night long.
They beg me to be invisible,
offer me fernseed and a cap woven
of milkweed and thistle fluff.
The dog is restless when they are in the house,
and my husband can’t sleep,
and I can’t explain. The cats
don’t seem to mind.
Whatever shall we do with realism,
reason, logic, the sciences that deny
the way things are? A cloud of demons,
their sharp laughter, the steadfast angels
raising their lavender shields.
Every tree has a soul; early in the morning
you can hear them singing to the sun.
Their music wakes the birds.
Angels are stars, balls of flaming gas.
Everything is real, but more or less
than anyone can imagine.
God is everything.
Nothing is mutually exclusive.
LOCATIONS
a poem by Mary Pratt
“. . around the edges of oddness”
~A Bluebird Fairy by Emily Anderson
You won’t find it
in halls of ivy, or
in the chambers of kings.
It isn’t between the covers
of carefully curated
volumes available only
to members with reservations.
Never in anything
organized
by color or size.
Never in anything glossed
or listed or rewarded.
But look!
It’s teetering on a tooth
from a reconstructed
conodont. Spinning
on the rim of a sixpence
balanced on a pole
balanced on the rubber
nose of a clown
riding a unicycle on
a tightrope stretched
between a stormcloud
and the beak of a raven.
It’s lurking in the garden dirt
under the left thumbnail
of the weaver’s second
daughter. If you want it,
you might start there.
‘I’ve just been picking a fairy out of the pack every day—in a fairly orderly way—the one on the top—since Cathy gave them to me. When I’ve been through the whole deck, I’ll shuffle and start again. The Chosen Fairy is hung up on a kitchen cabinet so I can see it off and on all day. I like them so very much!’- Mary Pratt
Dear Emily,
I am writing from Mexico. Our son and his love have a pack of your fairy cards. Every morning they draw and set one up. The day we arrived they had just hung up replacement hummingbird feeder to enhance their bird friends. And the next card they drew was the fairy of bird relationships. They love the practice.
Gracias por todo.
Sharyl and Peter