Mag 40 -- Pearls for Frogs

Prince of Toads

Pearls before swine

Frogs to princes

With but a kiss.

Silk to satin

Pigs' ears to silk purses

My velvet purses full of trash
Not golden coin.

If wishes were horses

As the childhood rhyme promised

Beggars would ride

If trash was treasure

I rich lady I would be.

But here I sit taking stock of trinkets

Treasure troves of memories

Long forgotten through time

Their value only to me

Lingering with my fingers on their treasures.

Oh, I have wished upon a star

But I have given up my dreams

Of princes rampant

In velvet cloaks.

Pearls of wisdom

I have learned after kissing many toads

Come only with time.

J. Binford-Bell

Once upon a frog

I am an artist and a sometime poet who came to Blogspot initially to find a home for my more serious and creative blogs and expressions and to link to my website- Binford-BellStudio.

That blog - Travels with Charley - seems to have gone into politics.That sounds as if the blog did it without my compliance. And maybe it did. I cannot say I have not enjoyed my excursions into the political issues that have plagued us this last year. Though initially I merely set out to explain the primary process to my European Internet friends.

Whatever the reason that blog became mired in essays of issues and politics I have found of late that I am missing a spot to post my paintings and poems, and essays about the creative process. Some do get posted on my 360 blog but I also do a lot of social networking and playing around with other themes there. My intention is to make this new blog: Creative Journey about just that. And so I begin with one of my more recent mixed water media paintings: Grand Procession. The inspiration was Monument Valley in Arizona.

And a poem that has nothing to do with the above painting: Once Upon A Frog.

I found, in an old journal, just three lines that I had scribbled down in my haste thirty some years ago and never developed further. The lines were:

As the lonely maiden dreams over crumpets and tea
Seeking a surfeit that comes not of eat and drink
But from the kiss of a frog that loves you only.

I re-wrote the lines into my current poetry journal and thought about them. What they meant perhaps thirty years ago and what they mean now. And the following is the poem they generated:

Once Upon a Frog

Once upon a youthful day
A lonely maiden dreamed over crumpets and tea
Seeking a surfeit that comes not of eat and drink
But from the kiss of a frog that loves you only.

But frogs, especially those that turn into princes,
At the kiss of a princess are but fairy tales
And once past thirty we know that fairies often lie
By forty we know for sure fairies are lies.

Oh, but were it true
Those things told to us as children
If wishing on a star could give us our dreams
And bottles rubbed brought us service of a genie.

But alas the lonely maiden knew as she sipped her bitter tea
Crumpets cannot fill us up
And inclined to make us fat
Nor do frogs, two footed or four, love just one princess truly.

(c) Jacqui Binford-Bell 2008

And perhaps this particular blog is all about the fact that the creative journey is often haphazard or totally unplanned. We set out for one destination and arrive at another be it a blog, a painting or a poem. Are we guided or misled by our muse?Or do creative people just have trouble staying on one track?