Narrative Morphology

You swim in your era, and as a child
You hardly notice how stories shape you.
If you grew up in a remote village,
Or in a hermetically sealed nation,
You hardly noticed story poverties.

How much could trees really notice the wind
That contorts their stretching branches differs
In a meadow, on a sea cliff, in gloom?
They swim away from the waves that buffet,
Or toward the calm glade that buffers them,

And so do you. You’re only more mobile,
A little, and if you fall in love hard
With someone your age from the other side
Of humanity’s dark, contesting woods,
And find that all their childhood wonder tales

Differed from yours, don’t assume that their souls
Will be unlike yours, too, although the shapes
Of their outcomes and stories will seem strange.
Imagine if an oak from a meadow
Stood next to an oak by the sea. You see?