Wisp of Imagination

Overnight rain had come down from somewhere up there - where exactly? - and soaked the planks of douglas fir that form the fence, darkening it as the fibers of the wood absorbed moisture.  Wood, very heavy and wet, stood in place without sagging, even though it might have wanted to, stolid and determined, static. 

When the sun met the fence, it became a dark stage for an ethereal and magical performance, played by the most basic elements we know:  Air and water.  Up wisped the strands of new clouds, twisting and turning slowly to their own song.  They looked young and fresh, breezy in their movements, swirling slowly, prettily.  The backlit moving vapor was enchanting; it danced, visible very briefly and then invisible, elusive, almost nothing at all. 

They were wisps that embodied the invisible, the unseen world of thought and memory.  As lightly and softly as they played above the fence, our imaginations turn and shift, barely noticed sometimes, formless but constantly moving and shifting, ungovernable but desired and prized.  We can no more live without our imagination than we can live without water.  Lost to water, parched thirst and death overcome us.  Absent imagination, we are lost as human beings. 

That the fence as stage, and vapor as unbound dancer, were not seen by anyone save one sleepy person peering from a bedroom window did not diminish their place in the whole fabric of the day, nor their right to simply exist and play.  An imagination that plays without observation or qualification still influences the rest of the universe, as it has been born of those influences and joins them as the wisps joined the passing clouds above.