The Fairytale....

Written in 1980


The Fairytale


There was once a boy who grew up terrified
in the House of Mediocrity.
He longed for adventure, the wild and the strange,
like an infant longs to suckle from the breast.

When he grew up to be a man he met a woman, a cliff-
walker who, after years of living in the wild, had become an
Expert Cliff Walker.

When he loved and trusted her he would allow her
to take him to the cliffs blindfolded.
But when his love turned to indifference and his
trust to suspicion, he begged her to stay away for
fear that if she blindfolded him she might actually
push him over one of the steep crags.

She knew what he did not...that he was going to the
cliffs anyway.  That they would beckon and call to
him much like the moon to the morning sun.

What he did not know and feared most was that she
would tell him--that if, per chance, he stumbled
on any of the deepest and steepled bluffs, he would
have the wings to see himself safely to the ground.

It was her deepest secret.  The very one he hoped she
would never tell him.

Tanina