Childhood: original artwork by Thomas Cole>

Once mundane,
caught up in the eternal flow,
life was a slow moving bayou
crawling its way into swamps
of despair.
And there along the banks
deep within the cattails and the cannas
coiled the ever angry moccasin
white mouth open, ready to strike
at the least provocation......

She drifted, lost
in the moss and the mettle
of her existence,
watching carefully
the storm brewing on the horizon,
cringing as the violent flashes
neared,
crying out in terror
against the raging force of nature
that threatened to bring
the winds of change
to destroy her habitual dream....

But smokey skies darkened
as the storm crashed
in all is fury around her
and the rain became a
wandering ocean
whose waves broke in
treasonous treachery across
the bow of her life...

Holding tightly to the
oarwells, she clawed at her eyes
and hid her face
from the fury
and cried out to the winds
"please stop...please,
i cant take it anymore"
and as quicky as it had come
the storm moved on into the distance
and the sunlight splintered
through the tumbling clouds
in sweeping fans of magenta
touching the tops of the trees
with golden fingers....

and the water rushed
in crystal streams of passion
carrying her swiftly
into the beauty
that had existed all along
within her soul.

phantom...(c)wla 6/21/2000