Everywhere you go in Sheridan, WY, people have gotten into the Halloween spirit. (Click on the first photo to see enlarged views,please.)
Everywhere you go in Sheridan, WY, people have gotten into the Halloween spirit. (Click on the first photo to see enlarged views,please.)

Released
All night long I follow scripts written by some hand
perhaps belonging to a self that consciousness has banned.
Fresh from dreams, I feel released from tasks committed to
as I remember other jobs that I’m obliged to do.
Who knows if dreams are showing us those things we could have done—
those things we have forgotten with the dawning of the sun.
If only I remembered that world that fades away,
perhaps I’d face a very different sort of day.
Instead, I slip into the role my life has led me to,
like forcing naked feet into a more confining shoe.
I wonder if these dreams were brought to light if they’d show more
of potential lives where I live closer to my core.
Perhaps these stories I concoct, labelling them as lore,
are simply other lives I live on a lower floor.
When I descend into my dreams, maybe I go to ponder
all those other me’s whose gifts I have chosen to squander.
Could it be in death that I’m released to find a goal
in the bargain basement of the building of my soul—
to find another path where I may once more start a quest
towards a self just one step closer to my very best?
The prompt today is release. Once again, I’ve edited and reblogged a poem written three and a half years ago. A fine way to find time to edit and since I never remember these poems, perhaps if you’ve followed my blog for this long, you’ve forgotten them, too.
Is this just a ploy to get us to taste their magical potion? Hot potato and leek soup sounds irresistible. Dare we chance it?

I noted to my sister that autumn in Sheridan, Wyoming, although gorgeous, is lacking the red of other photos bloggers have posted. She explained that maples don’t do well in Wyoming and that they account for much of the red in the fall landscape. I have seen some bearberry and plum trees that give a small dash of purplish red. I’ve been waiting for a fall prompt and Marilyn just sent me this one, so here are scenes I’ve witnessed in the week and a half I’ve been here:
Click on first photo to enlarge all.
The Rib and Chop House marked National Breast Cancer Awareness Month by having the wait staff wear pink T-shirts and serving cotton candy margaritas. They filled the glass with cotton candy, then poured a margarita over it. The result was the glass you see to your left. We ordered them, but my friend Patty had to drink mine.
Ironically, I’m going in for a biopsy and MRI in about fifteen minutes. I got up an hour early to write a poem about this but when I came back to my blog from importing this photo from my phone, it had vanished. Hope that is a good sign. Get your mammograms, gals!!!! (Note, added Oct 21: It was a good sign. I tested benign!!)
The prompt today was express.
(Something there is that doesn’t want me to express what I really did write to this prompt, so I will let the matter lie.)
The Halloween prompt today is blood. Here are some sugar skulls made by kids for the Day of the Dead that reflect that theme to a small degree.

And finally, no blood posting is complete without a posting of a blood moon.
For Jennifer’s Halloween Challenge.