Corrupt, of course,
what all of them did,
bartering with daughters,
promising too big,
expecting too much,
skipping out on the bill,
wanting more than they needed,
telling tall tales,
but there’s one thing I learned
about gold being spun
out of straw, though strange,
it can be done.
This is wonderful in so many ways, but I want to highlight a formal one of those. I mean the way you sidle, stanza to stanza, from slant vowel rhyme to slant consonantal rhyme to full rhyme. It gives the poem a sense of feeling forward in a dark, unfamiliar place toward a ray of light coming through a crack in the door. And then the door opens! Lovely….
Oh Joe! You totally made my night. Thank you for resonating with the formal part … that is usually, I figure, just my own private game that I play (or more likely I am being played by the poem) … so it’s extra fun to have someone else join in the game … and your comment is pretty much a poem in and of itself
And the Grimm brothers return, but I like your turn on the old, making it new.
I do have a Grimm thang … Oh those stories. They have a way of turning inside us …