“Read them fairy tales.” Albert Einstein

How could we forget that
toddlers squeal the anthem of the moon:
a song muses covet? Did we also forget
which child purpled the night and placed
gold coins in true baskets like aging gypsies

to make a home for a lost cherubim? The infants
who sleep behind the gate of the vegetable garden,
near the garden hose sleep with downy-soft kittens.
They breathe rose petals and coo at the cow, yes—
just as houses may return to hold the women in.

There’s no Peter Rabbit to slide a fence over.
No mother-made jacket to leave behind, snagged.
No chocolate bunnies. Not even a sugar-candy egg.
The toys. The toys. O, rue the day we threw out
the toys. The wobbling Weebles that have fallen

down into yellow Tonka trucks have gone to
a cardboard church where GI Joe is a witness as
Barbie marries Ken. The toys. The toys.
Now only in dreams, where we cannot escape
the storybook wisdom in a bowl of captured light.

Written in response to a post by The Third Eve