The Forbidden Ride: An Icelandic Love Story

The Forbidden Ride is the story of a 15-year-old-girl and her first love. Set in 10^th century Iceland, a time of harsh laws and cruel men, Freyja falls in love with Jarn, a handsome young man from the next settlement, only to have him ripped from her by her father Sigurd as he enforces a merciless ancient Icelandic law against Jarn for the crime of riding Sigurd's spirit  horse Freyfaxi without permission. Surrounded by customs and rules that make little sense to her, Freyja must overcome her lack of status as a young woman in a man’s world of brutal justice and blood in order to save her family from banishment and shame, and with the help of the magical shaman-horse, Faxi, to regain her freedom to be with Jarn. 

This is the first book that Lorry and I have done together since A Mind With Wings: The Story of Henry David Thoreau.  It's available on Amazon.com in digital!

Ozymandias

It has taken me months to charm this King of Round Stone. I call him Ozymandias, though certainly not to his face. I am sorry he doesn't trust me -- or so I have felt for the longest time. But today, of all days, blessed by abundant sun and trust, he lets me creep up to his vast castle of rock. And having crept, I stop and stare and he casts a wary eye upon me, but permits me to press the button and capture his image for all, or anyone, to see. And here is a verse to commemorate the day ....

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822

Copperhead Necktie

This morning in the golden sunlight along came a serpent. Marked like a copperhead he was instead a lovely young cornsnake just up from a hibernation nap. Knowing cornsnakes are friends, I scooped him up and Lorry took a quick pic of him sliding around my neck and off my back. He was out for lizards and I didn't want to keep him from his early morning hunt. I set him down and he slid gracefully into an asparagus fern and disappeared.

I was five years old when I met my first cornsnake and this is how it goes:

Just up from a nap
out in the yellowy tassles

the hired hand hung something loose
back of my neck

belly scale shiny feel
a burnt umber
copperhead necktie.

____

It was the hired hand, Ray, who said it was a copperhead. All these years it took me to find out it wasn't, or shouldn't have been, but maybe still could've been but, more likely, it was a cornsnake like the one that just visited us.