I rescued a tattered book of fairy tales, long out of copyright and the pages hanging by a thread. I was ready to throw it away as unredeemable until I opened it and found images that spoke to me from the storybooks of my childhood, tales with meanings far deeper than today's cartoon images.

The fairy tale story of the beauty and the beast and the image from an old book inspired me to a bit of poetry..."Beauty and the Beast, in imagination if not in fact. He, so strong and strange, as if another species entire...And we, so fair and frail, and yet, somehow...Mistress."

It is very rich in color, texture, and imagery. The blue floats over the gold background, held a bit apart with spacers, and it's edged with an organic border of burnt sienna.