SILLY PUNS & POETIC FLIGHTS OF FANCY

Impossible Things

A crow leads me to wonderlands

Photo by vegonaise on Unsplash

All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.

– Lady Julian of Norwich/medieval English mystic

From the balcony, wave watching, reverencing

the sleek reach of the palms, the rippling echoes of white sands

when a crow alights — a ballerina en pointe upon the railing.

I have come to the coast to recuperate after an endless illness,

and, after a week of good mornings, this is the closest Crow has agreed to be coaxed yet.

I crow, too, enjoying the silly, decidedly unpoetic pun —

Lady Julian and Alice, you see, frolic with me,

children building sandcastles, gulls skimming waves.

While beneath the seas, mermaids weave pearls and galleon droppings into their hair,

and beyond the blue sky, stars leave the barre to begin their floor work in earnest.

All is curioser and curioser. All is well indeed.

Why not share the Red Queen’s madness? Why not believe, before breakfast,

in answered prayers, in plenitudes and swells of impossible things?

©Jenine Bsharah Baines 2026

A poem begun over a month ago in Florida and edited over the ocean yesterday as I winged my way to England. This morning, I am up well before dawn to sit amongst the sarsens at Stonehenge. (A privilege normally reserved for Druids.)

Speaking of impossible things and wonderlands, how wondrous it is that Thomas Gaudex resurrected Scribe!

Thank you, dearest readers. Fingers crossed life will settle down once I return from my English pilgrimage…May I soon find myself reading and writing on Medium more regularly. Love.

Jenine Jeni, Jen, J Call me what you will, what feels right. Proper names are poetry in the raw. W.H. Auden