The Witch’s Apprentice

One day, young child Imagination

Wanted to play. She wandered the house

Her parents, Memory and Language,

Owned, and ended up in the attic

Heaped with their dustiest belongings.

Imagination found some scissors

And racks and racks of moth-eaten clothes.

She said, Now I can make what I want!

And she set about cutting up cloth.

She had in mind a costume drama,

Part ghost story, part miracle play,

In which she, Imagination, starred

As the creator of a portal

To many new and fantastic worlds

That looked suspiciously like dreaming

About old and less fantastic worlds.

She had no trouble with the portal,

But cut as she might, she couldn’t make

The old clothes into clothes of new cloth.

All one rainy, dreary afternoon

Up in that attic she snipped and stitched

And snipped some more, until a vast pile

Of scraps lay heaped on the attic floor

Like hillscapes of musty confetti.

Exhausted, Imagination napped,

Then woke and crawled down through the trap door.

The casement window banged in the wind

When Old Mother Witch Experience

Blew in to pick up the mess and hang

New and repaired costumes on the racks,

Since Imagination would come back.