Poetry Friday: A Fairy Tale Poem

When I was an elementary classroom teacher, I did an extensive unit on folklore. I like the old fairy tales and folktales--not the sanitized versions, but the traditional retellings, including the "grim" Grimm tales in which Snow White's stepmother dances to her death in hot iron shoes...and the nasty stepsisters of Ashputtle (Cinderella) get their eyes pecked out by birds.

I also enjoyed reading modern humorous picture book versions of old tales to my students when I was a school librarian. To name a few of the books I read: Falling for Rapunzel by Leah Wilcox, Goldie and the Three Bears by Diane Stanley, Henny Penny by Jane Wattenberg, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and The Frog Prince Continued by Jon Scieszka, and The Wolf Who Cried Boy by Bob Hartman.

With these old tales in mind, I selected the following poem for this Poetry Friday. I hope you like it.


Immortality
Lisel Mueller

In Sleeping Beauty's castle
the clock strikes one hundred years
and the girl in the tower returns to the
world.
So do the servants in the kitchen,
who don't even rub their eyes.
The cook's right hand, lifted
an exact century ago,
completes its downward arc
to the kitchen boy's left ear;
the boy's tensed vocal cords
finally let go
the trapped, enduring whimper,
the fly, arrested mid-plunge
above the strawberry pie,
fulfills its abiding mission
and dives into the sweet, red glaze.


You can read the rest of the poem here at Poetry 180.