Margaret, Sweet Margaret, Mermaid of the Sea is dedicated to the life of Margaret Dyches Viles. Even though her family and friends will appreciate this book, it was written with the intent that everyone might enjoy her life. The poems of this book are written so that anyone can relate to them, young or old. The poetry language was purposely written in an uncomplicated and simple fashion for the benefit of all readers. Even though the poems are easy to understand, don't let that fool you because their meanings run deep. In order for one to fully understand this book readers need to know something about the life of Margaret. Margaret Dyches Viles was born August 27, 1937 in Augusta, Georgia to Laura and Marshall Dyches. She was the second child in a family of three girls. The way the author, Sherry Eubank remembers her, Margaret was a free spirit who was more different than anyone else. Some of the fondest memories Sherry has was whenever she and her younger sister Holly visited their Aunt Margaret in South Carolina. In the mornings, around eight o'clock and sometimes in the afternoons, she would take the girls to her dining room table and create unicorn hats(wide strips of white paper with a hole in the center for the spiral paper horn). After they finished making the hats the three women would put them on and enjoy Gerber baby food cereal, and blueberries, powdered sugar, and cream(Margaret said blueberries, sugar, and cream were a unicorn's favorite food) together. Particularly in the afternoons the trio would trot over to Margaret's neighbor and friend Betty. Betty had two horses she allowed Sherry and Holly to ride on the rest of the afternoon. At the end of the day, when the stars were in the heavens and the moon hung high, Sherry and Holly settled down in their beds and waited for story time with Margaret. Margaret told the most wonderful stories about mischievous fairies, and the lost misadventures in the Land of Oz(The Wizard of Oz), and rainbow daughters who slid down rainbows. Yes, Margaret believed in an unseen world full of magic and wonder. According to Margaret a cobweb was actually a fairy's nest. As a hobby she created gardens using toadstool and fairy sculptures hoping to entice fairies and elves and other magical beings to dwell there. She didn't just keep her magic and make-believe ideas at home; she took them out and shared them with the world. One way she did this was through her work as a children's photographer. Margaret loved all children. She especially loved dressing up children in make-believe costumes and placing them in front of mystical, fantastic backdrops. For example, she would dress up a little girl as a mermaid and sit her on the beach to play with seashells, or she took three little girls, dressed them like fairies and placed them in the misty clearing of a forest of live oaks complete with ancient- looking hanging spanish moss. She might seem childish in her ways but Margaret was a unique kind of person who felt life and love very deeply. She didn't pattern her life after someone else. She lived in an intangible world full of angels, and many other unseen beings. In order to create the poems in this book, Sherry spent months studying various forms of poetry including abstract poems, allegories, blank verse, free verse, light verse, rhymes, ritual poems, lines, couplets, quatrains, and cinquains. Work began in the spring of 2011 and concluded in early February of 2012.