A Change In Mind

My Special Place
- from a writing exercise formulated by Julie Jordan Scott who asked me to write a haiku three years ago and unleashed the repressed writer in me.

My special place is my garden. In it I find inspiration, solace, joy. It is a reflection of my soul, my connection to nature, my constant loving companion.

I wipe this canvas clean and here there is now pure white space, ready to be transformed, but I will hold myself in this pregnant emptiness for a fleeting moment or is it eternity. Here in the nothingness of creation, time is an illusion.

I raise my magician’s staff and wave it across the canvas. Green and grassy slopes appear, falling gently towards a living boundary of water, cascading over shining pebbles, then slowly meandering in deeper calmer channels, sometimes so slowly it appears to be completely immobile.

Another wave of my staff and a little wood appears on the hillside which has materialised on the other side of the stream. It is spring time here in this garden of my soul and leaves are unfurling in all the beauty of the newly born. They dance in a soft breeze that whispers through the branches, singing stories of life and love and adventure. The brook babbles in response telling the hill tales of far away shores, mighty oceans and brave explorers who reached beyond the limitations of fear and borders.

It is spring time here in this garden of my soul, and with a single motion of my hand, the sun shines, warm and mellow. The light has that unmistakable quality of the spring about it, shimmering, sharp, clear, a light to paint worlds by.

Pale, delicate apple blossom drifts down from the trees creating a sea of the gentlest pink, lapping against the grey-brown bark of the slender tree trunks, ships in an ocean of dreams. Bluebells form undulating drifts of dark sky through the long waving grass.

Bird song blends with the buzzing of bees and all is sublimely peaceful here.

An ancient pear tree split in two by a lighting bolt, defies age and destruction to blossom profusely, a cascade of white froth blessing this beloved place.

In the blink of an eye a wraith like figure of a woman materialises from within the tree. She is the creative spirit of this garden. She hides within the pear tree, hides from the world, showing herself only in the transcendent glory of her work. She glances around cautiously. She has no desire to be seen, but she draws soul sustenance from the pleasure those who visit show in her creations. They must know her by this and this alone.

Her elfin face sparkles with joy when she walks to the water’s edge. She listens to the little waterfall speak of the bridge he forms between two worlds; the water of life flowing from on high to the hungry thirsty lands below. He loves his role as a conduit of life. She hears it in the blessing of the rushing, splashing, jumping waters. The breeze quickens and her long red hair fans out sparking fire in the sunlight. Each spark falls to the ground and where each drops, a crimson poppy will bloom in the summer months.

Suddenly she laughs and in her laughter, a light and loving vibration touches the fabric of creation. A mother fox and her cubs are drawn from the undergrowth to roll and play fearlessly on the lawn. She rolls and plays with them and wherever her skirts touch, daisies and buttercups grow.

This is a blessed place, this garden of the soul.

You may never meet the spirit of this place for she is a creature of another world who holds to the secret ways of an ancient magic.

Yet you will know all there is to know of her in her creations.

This garden is the essence of this spirit.

It tells everything.