For Paul Brookes’ Ekphrastic Challenge, Day Twenty-Five inspired by the works below. (The link will take you to all the art and poems.)

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Wondrous and Strange

Mirror-worlds
where fairies dwell in
always-green,
but in-between,
in that center line, humans
live with paler hues

unable
to see vibrant shades
or beyond
space and time,
defined in narrow bands—birth
death, and then the end.

But there he
fell, and she caught him—
beautiful
Fairy Queen.
“Stay,” says she, but no, he wants
home and family.

So, he runs,
bumbles, stumbles, from
the wondrous
fairy place
of green and dancing flowers,
because he senses–knows

beneath the
glow, snapping teeth snarl
and bite, and
huge monsters,
alligator crawl, slither
from swamps, over walls–

it is not
the place for humans.
Our hearts must
wake in that
center line axis of earth,
sun, moon; we need…