Bound by a hedge of spiteful briars in the spellbound heart of a night-time forest, a rose lay hidden from men’s desires for a hundred years, as was promised by a jealous fairy in a fit of rage, who imprisoned the palace in a thorny cage. Young men who came to press their suit were […]
Category: Poems about Fairy Tales
Do you dare…
to open the ramshackle gate and enter a shadowy place where gems masquerade as pebbles and bones; disturb the sleep of a petrified gnome; dig up burly clods of mud that turn into unblinking toadstones? Do you dare to feed them with earth-bound worms that squirm with spells cast in sifted loam; to purse your […]
Little Mermaid
I was foam and I was surf, a wind-borne sigh, a washing wave upon the earth, a sea-child, I. I lost my fishy smell for him, my tail and scales, I gave up my right to swim and sing with whales. In my mouth a withered root of witch-torn tongue which I had to prostitute […]
Another Cinderella
Fairy tales are never true, happy endings are not for me and you, pinioned by our rustic lives as daughters, sisters, mothers, wives. With the future so uncertain, we cower behind our dingy curtains, praying for footmen, never a prince – they’d be so much harder to convince that beneath our neglected exteriors breathe princesses, […]
The Selfish Giant’s Garden
They visited every day For the grass, starry flowers And space to play for hours. In spring, peach trees burst into blossom And the happy children feasted on fruit all autumn. After a seven year visit with a Cornish ogre, Summer saw the return of the owner, A selfish giant who scared them away With […]
The Little Robber Girl
My response to Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Fairy Tale Prompt When I was a child, I remember reading The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen and wondering about the little robber girl who helped Gerda in her search for Kai, who had been lured away by the Snow Queen. One freezing, dark night in the middle of […]
The Three Children of Fortune
A Grimm tale in response to imaginary garden with real toads Poetry To The Third Power Once upon a time, a father said to his three sons: ‘I am growing old and about to die; I am poor and have no money But I will give you each a gift. Go to a place […]
The end of The Juniper Tree
Part 3 When the bird’s song was over it flew away; Gone too were the handkerchief and the boy And pretty Margery smiled with joy. It landed on the roof of a goldsmith’s house, Singing: ‘My mother killed her little son; My father thought me lost and gone; But sister Margery pitied me And laid […]
writing in north norfolk 