Just a lazy summer day

What’s one to do on a lazy summer day when the house is quiet and no one around? It's such a pleasure to be so pleased, to be at ease on a summer's day! So I go out to the garden. I was alone in the garden, thinking about the heat of the end of August, about the blue sky, about the need for a good rain… “Ssssh… listen! Can you hear it?” Certainly, summer is a season of sounds: bumblebees buzzing, bird singing among the branches of the callery pear and on the table the ice clinking in glasses of fresh lemonade.

With absolutely nothing to do but to daydream I soon fell asleep.... It wasn't too long though before out of the heat haze that hung over the garden something appeared... A mirage I thought! Or was it more like a fairy? Can fairies hypnotize you with their eyes? “Do you seek the road to Fairyland”?--this vision asked. “It's quite easy, wait till a yellow moon gets up and if you know the very words to cast a spell of might, you get upon a thistledown, and, if the breeze is right, you’d sail away to Fairyland along a track of light”.

That's what the fairy said to me. But oh what were the words to cast the spell? “Dance with me”!--the fairy said. “You must first learn to play the game of light and shadows”… And there I was, and there she was dancing, fluttering among the roses, showering herself with all the petals. She was so happy and free in her spirit... Her cherry-red fairy tunic reminded me of soft wings, and of little tiny red flowers, little sprinkles of flowers like a poppy meadow, like a field of Queen Anne's lace in the sunlight…. “Dance, dance in the month of August… dance, dance for the Queen of F'ey, oh my Sisters dance and sing, dance around the fairy ring.... La la la la la la la la”. Her hair wild in the afternoon breeze as she sang and dance and fluttered around the roses...

All the little butterflies danced around her... a colored joy to my sleepy eyes they flicker-flack as they flutter around… one of them, posed on the very tip of her toe, moved along with her and although the fairy danced, and flapped her wings ever so graciously, the butterfly stood there, like a pretty ring on the tip of her toe...

Oh how I love to dream of fairies can you imagine my delight? So unlike me, the fairy moved with such grace and ease, as if one with nature she floated with the breeze...

“But oh I had to dance even if I lack her grace… after all I needed to learn the spell that would take me straight to Fairyland... So dance I did… poor clumsy me dashed off behind the fairy and danced along the fairy dance of light and shadows... My feet hard on the grown, trippin', stumblin', flippin', fumblin'......

Until something marvelous happened: Dancing ever towards the center that is right here, nature enveloped us... away, together, the way dreams walk the earth and haunts the heart and find movement in our feet in the shape of wings... her shadow went in and out with her, and what I saw was very very like me from the heels up to the head... My shadow became her shadow, we were one and two and all the same... she stayed so close behind me, she's a fairy you can see; I'd think shame to think it was just a dream as that shadow became my own… It was such a wonderful and realistic dream after all...

Higher higher ever higher reaching to the sky she flew... then slowly drifting down as the wind began to sigh... at once she crossed the clearing with such gracious leaps and bounds and disappeared… her music was a symphony all the forest sounds.... I woke after that... her song still lingering on my mind: "fly away with me release the ground below there's everything to see and everywhere to go.. take my hand within your hand and watch our wings appear, the hidden world is seen, the distant world is near"... There are fairies at the bottom of my garden, you know! If you ever want to meet them let me know... my garden is not so very, very far away; you pass the gardener’s shed and you just keep straight ahead. I do so hope you could come... in the mean time, I’m learning, playing, having the time of my life in the garden… living is one third effort and one third just living… but of course, to make living fun we also need one third of imagination… Visit Susan, at A southern daydreamer for more "Outdoor Wednesday" delight.