Today's Zelda's Inferno exercise was to write something that included or was inspired by "fascinating facts" that someone else provided. I drew:
1. 1 in 20 African Americans have Native American blood
2. The 2 South American countries (due) south of Miami are Peru and Ecuador
3. The largest fish is a whale-shark.
used the first one, and came up with this:
we build identities on the stories we are told
ancestral tales handed down through generations
but these leave out so very much...
Cherokees on the Trail of Tears
took their slaves with them
they don't get much mentioned in family histories
but
now science tells us
in the veins of five percent of the black men and women of this country
a bit of Indian blood flows
now we can learn how much got left out of ancestor's stories
and wonder what else they got wrong...
Then, we got into a discussion about dreams. Which inspired this:
sometime when I was a child
(I don't remember this but know it must have happened)
my mother or father explained dreams to me
told me that they weren't real
nobody has told my dogs this
and I wonder how they understand
this sudden transportation
I see them twitching, whining
chasing dream-squirrels or whatever
and then suddenly awake
not knowing dream from waking
it's a magickal reality they have
and I know why sometimes they seem to look at me with pity