Note: Mayberrie is pronounced “May-Bare-REE” , accent on the “ree”.
In 1995 I had a dream that took place in another time and place. In the days and weeks that followed, the poems in Parts I, II and III began their flow. New ones are still coming, after 17+ years. (There were also a few older poems that belonged, like “Reverie”.)
Though they’re considered fictional, the people in the poems were, and still are, real to me.
Thank you for reading!
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(Latest update to list – Feb. 3, 2013)
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Dedicated: to the couple in this poem – centuries ago, and in 1995, and forever.
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Prologue
Her secret songs:
And the story (so far….)
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To be continued….
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Epilogue
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The Mayberrie Series is copyright (C) 2012 Betty Hayes Albright
Are they in any specific order?
Parts 1, 2 and 3 are in the order that they came into my head, which felt like a story line. But a few others have come since then over the years, and I honestly can’t say where they fit in, except as an epilogue. (Plus a few that were written before the dream – a prologue?) Hope you’re able to make some sense of it all!
I think dreams are very powerful and I’m glad you shared this sense of having poems “come” to you in the way, in a voice that feels different from the norm. Fantastic.
Anna, I agree about the power of dreams and visions. There are so many “worlds” around us, intermingled – we need only be open to them.
Betty, I finally got to sit down and read through the whole series without interruption. I have started a couple of times, but something always intervened. Before I could sit down to read this a rattlesnake ended up in the yard cornered by Pax and Juneau, our two dogs, so my ability to comment was delayed again as Ethel and I worked at getting barking, excited dogs from a rattlesnake rattling like crazy and swiveling its head from one dog and human to another dog and human. All kinds of excitement busting out. But at last I’ve got a moment. I hope.
I wanted to read them all in one sitting to see how well they hung together. My sense of the series up to this point has been of this intense romanticism located in a mythical land where a woman communicated even over distance with her warrior man. There connection was so deep that a wren could come into a room where the woman had lit a candle and then fly out, circling three times, to the man, bridging the distance between the lovers. The poems were these intense blooms of image, romance, and magic that exploded into your head while you were reading them.
Reading the whole series, to the extent you have developed it to date, pulled the story as it is developing together for me. The intense blooms of poems were still there, but there is also a continuity and a storyline that holds its own interest and makes you want to keep reading. Ethel read the series too and was really impressed. The point is that the story you are building is strong enough to link the blooms together into a meadow of blooms, building slowly to a climax that is yet to be seen.
This series is as good as I sensed it was back when I first read it. I want you to keep developing it, keep on bringing on the magic and romance of the story as well as the strength of the poetry. If this is flowing out of a dream, then I hope, I hope the dream continues until the story has its climax and is done.
Thomas, thank YOU and also Ethel for taking the time to read through this whole series. (And in the midst of a rattle snake crisis – ack!!) I’m really glad you find the story hangs together with all these miss-matched poems (different styles, etc.) I never know in advance what will flow through the pen (or what form it will be in) but maybe that’s a good thing. I hope you know how grateful I am to you both for giving me such strong encouragement!
I hope you and your dogs have no more run ins with snakes – that would shake me up and give me nightmares for a week!
Thank you again,
Betty