a girl can dream, can't she?

here is a path a few yards from our apartment that takes you between two homes and down into ... well that's what I didn't know and wanted to know. I was confident it led straight to a rocky outcrop which dips into the waters of Back Bay where our sailboat lives and waits for us to play on windy days. Yesterday evening I decided to find out. I was wrong. The path beads dead ahead into community soccer and baseball fields. It's a nice little shortcut if you're third base and your team's up first and you're running late. Since none of those things apply to me nor do I ever want them to (hello, baseball lovers) I strayed left from the path in short order and headed toward the water over the rocks and lichen. I found our boat from on high, surrounded by grey rock and grey water and grey sky. A grey day, mild and still, like a West Coast November. The woods interrupted my trek to the bay which I was minorly irritated by because things were grey enough, albeit lovely, in the wide open. Where open and grey is still and calming, woods and grey would be dark and stifling or so I thought. But the floor within the copse fairly glowed with colour and light and I loved it. My elbows and knees became well acquainted with roots and moss and I have the photos and worse for wear jacket and jeans to prove it. When the timber was finished with me and popped me me back out on the rock and into the open over the water I heard the slightest lisp behind me and turned to see a fox worried at me between the trees.

She was beautiful. Once circling me, twice marking her territory, she, as I understood it, let me know it was okay to visit and perhaps I didn't know it but she lived here and please don't set up house. It tickled me in an eerie sort of way that she'd been watching me the whole time I'd been clicking through the flora and fauna of her wood. How silent she was! How wary! She slipped back to her thicket border and watched me front-porch like as if to say, thanks, but I already gave at the office. I like to hope, however, what she was really thinking was, gee that girl was sweet. If I wasn't so darn shy we'd be swell friends.

Or what's an imagination for?