Of Shakespear and What Nots....

for those of you who know me, it doesn't come as a surprise if i tell you that i have absolutely no poetic bones in me. i can neither appreciate good poetry, discern between the profound and mere simply rhyming, and i cannot write poetry.


but a few years ago i was struck by a piece written by neil gaiman. i felt the sadness, the acceptance and more funny things. how can this happen??? it was just words rearranged in some particular order, but i so very nearly shed a tear.


you see, my brother got this book of his short stories and poems for my birthday. i largely ignored the poems and read through them perfunctionarily. but anyway, in his rather extensive introduction. he wrote a little of every entry. of "Locks", he wrote thus:


"Goldilocks and the Three Bears" was a story by the poet Robert Southey. Or rather, it wasn't - his version told of an old woman and three bears. Ther form of the story and what happened was right, but people knew that the story needed to be about a little girl rather than an old woman, and when they retold it, they put her in.


Of course, fairy tales are transmissible. You can catch them, or be infected by them. They are the currency that we share withthose who walked the world before ever we were here. (Telling stories to my children that I was, in my turn, told by my parents and grandparents makes me feel part of something special and odd, part of the continuous stream of life itself.) My daughter Maddy, who was two when I wrote this for her, is eleven, and we still share stories, but they are now on television or films. We read the same books and talk about them, but I no longer read them to her, and even that was a poor replacement for telling her stories out of my head.


I believe we owe it to each other to tell stories. It's as close to a credo as i have, or will, I suspect, ever get.


so, armed with a brief description. read the poem "Locks" and tell me what you think.