The Allegory of the Story

A story well told is only the lost,
Evil twin of the story told poorly.
We know this, who are stories told poorly.
Our world is more capacious than is thought.
See? Having done as much damage to this
As we could manage, here we are again,
As if we hadn’t done damage enough,
Still stuck in our dark, familiar forest,
Still lost, still caught up in dreams of strangeness
Conjured by myriad similar trees.

Having no plot planned past getting off track,
Of course we keep losing track of the plot.
Containing no character more profound
Than our collective personal pronoun,
We find ourselves alone as well as lost,
With not one entertaining companion.
This is how we know we are poorly told:
The only echoes we hear are our own,
Or our own among the sounds of our world
Of woods without speech or signs, only sounds.