Beautiful Old Oak
by Esmerelda Little Flame

Beautiful old Oak
confidante of a child
who hugged it and sat with it
day after day
year after year
and told the tree
everything

everything...

Beautiful old Oak
my sanity and strength
my beloved friend
planted so long ago
when my grandparents
built their house
in the land of dreams
America

Confidante of my father
as he grew to manhood
confidante of my heart

Every day you were there
outside my window
just outside my window
always there

symbol of strength
symbol of wisdom
symbol of my family
symbol of eternity

Now you are old
Now you are dying
They are going to take you down
any day

and I hug you one last time
and I whisper I love you
with tears in my eyes
trying to tell you how grateful I am
but you already know

Beautiful old Oak
I got so much from you
so very much from you
of who I am

I will try to live in a way that would make you proud
I will try to live in honor like you

Nothing dies
only changes

I guess you are teaching me that , too

I love you
I love you

Goodby until we meet again

Fire Cycle
by Link

A spark begins, it moves and grows
A fire is born, still fragile it glows
One twig to another, gentle and tame
Patience, persistence, young new flame
Fire higher, dancing and bold
Blazing, amazing, full heat unfolds
Until it calms to gentle coals
Ashes of all achieved goals
Simple story to remember
From spark, to blaze, to gentle ember

Dreamscapes
by Grace Macy

I love these pre-dawn dreams.
Love the rush and tumble of pure
Imagination,
confused images that can make perfect
Sense
before the hard, unwelcome light banishes them from behind my eyes
like some Dream-catcher web
gone wrong.

Is there a universe for each fragile
barrage of images
as the brain, The Muse, the little faery-winged imp of the Imagination
picks and chooses the story it wants to
Tell?

Is this how the world was created?
How it continues to be created?

Twitches of a great cosmic mind,
filtering thoughts
and skies
through its wondrous dreaming
Mind?
Does it also wake and sometimes
mutter curses under its
Breath,

"Well, shit!  I liked that one!"

And try to fall back
asleep,
recapture that dream
only to have it slip through star-clad
fingers
and create
a whole new
Galaxy
as different images twirl into place?

And does something even greater dream that cosmic
Presence,
and something else dream
That,
until it's a collection of little Russian dolls,
one inside the other,
stretching to Infinity and yet all coming back
to one place, one mind, one turning Goliath of dreams and
fragmented
illusions
of Reality?

Who's dreaming whom,
or does it matter
So long as It
Doesn't
Wake
Up
?