Poem For Today Dabney Stuart

"Hidden Meanings"

Both Hansel and Jack hated their mothers:

Jack sold the old cow

so she threw his seeds away;

Hansel let his feel his fingers a lot

and then stuffed her in the oven.

Their fathers were troublesome, too:

one was a wimp willing to sacrifice

his children; the other was so big

he had to be cut down, stalk first.

We know nothing about Rumplestiltskin's

parents, but he played by himself in the woods

and when he couldn't get a baby by proxy

stuck his wooden leg through the floor.

The two boys finally got rich, like Cinderella,

but beyond that the ends are obscure.

Maybe they entered life, and found it to be

its own magic fable, as consequential

as any Snow White Blood Red,

and on the surface, true.


by Dabney Stuart (b.1937)


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