#lyricalgarden

The picture of Gwen, outside Louden,

attracted many views.

It learned from each just how to watch,

and gathered what they knew.

And then one day, without fanfare,

it opened up its eye,

frightening all the tourists

enough to make some cry.

The tourists told their story,

and many stayed away.

But others grew more curious,

so more came every day.

Now the picture's never lonely,

and its eye does never close.

But it's getting very tired.

Bloomfish spend their lives swimming through ponds of unformed thought,

among the lilies yet to bloom and thunderstorms unwrought.

They feed upon the nibble seeds that drift beneath the foam,

The Bi-Sickle Dragon once had four feet, before a thought merchant meddled.

The thought took root. Two feet fell off.

So the dragon just sighed and pedalled.

He says that thoughts are dangerous things when thinkers fail to weed.

Jenny Too-Many had too many thoughts,

They cluttered the room where she sat.

She’d brooded a thousand idea-eggs,

And ten thousand more after that.

Some grew into flowers.

Some grew into birds.

Some grew inconveniently wise.

Yet Jenny had troubles no idea could cure,

No wonder could kindle surprise.

The Parcel Bird watched from the arm of the couch

While her fresh little notions were hatched.

It warbled them neatly from egg into world,

With a skill that no thinker had matched.

Around her lay relics of marvels discarded,

Their astonishment died long ago.

Ideas that had sacrificed all of their flesh

For the moment's delight they'd bestow.

Jenny glanced over each one in turn

And merely sank into a sigh.

She preferred to sit silent and bored on the couch,

Than to force her mood into a lie.

As a Too-Many she lived up to her name,

And knew every wonder by view.

The Gardens provided a plethora of thoughts.

The Garden blooms too much, too strange for any ordinary gaze,

and worse for one so very young, who sees beyond the haze.

One friend complains, another weeps beneath its teeming skies.

The Keeper of Unfinished Thoughts collects them when they’re wild,

all feral in the Brain-bramble, and bristling like a child.

She folds them in the miniphant’s ear, safe-hidden in its sheath,

You mustn’t step too softly here, the thoughts are apt to sprout.

A careless idea, dropped at noon, may bloom by teatime out.

The clocks grow petals after rain. The crows make all the hours wrong.