A Tale Will TellA Poem by David Lewis PagetHe was only a simple storyteller But looked much like a clown, He wore red, yellow and jingle bells When coming to our town, He’d sit outside by the wishing well And gather up all the kids, Who’d laugh, and clap their little hands At everything he did. The parents, they didn’t like him much, Their eyes were filled with fear, They thought, like the Pied Piper, all Their kids might disappear. He seemed to be so harmless, though He won their trust, despite The stories that he would whisper by The wishing well each night. He set up a little pay booth at The well, and scrawled a sign, ‘I only charge but a dollar each For the stories that are mine.’ But no-one left any money At his tiny little hut, So everyone woke one day to find Their doors were nailed shut. And then they found in their gardens There were strange things in the ground, All their veggies were growing square That should be growing round, He told a tale of ungrateful folk Who proved to be so mean, Their square was filling with artichokes, Their lawns were blue, not green. He asked, would nobody pay him For his stories and his verse, They said there wasn’t a way in hell, But he could do his worst, The beer was turned into water down At all the local bars, And when they went to go home, they found They couldn’t start their cars. They dragged him before a magistrate Who said, ‘You’re quite a threat,’ He jingled his bells and said, ‘Oh well, You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ The bench the magistrate sat on Was wood, cut down from trees, And suddenly sprouted branches Five feet high and thick with leaves. They couldn’t admit what he had done, He’d made them look like fools, He had a rapport with nature and He’d modified the rules, ‘I’ve only to tell a story, it Becomes a new creation, Anything that I want, I get From my imagination.’ Everyone pays their dollar now The streets are neat and clean, The carrots aren’t growing upside down And even the lawns are green, But everyone’s still suspicious when It comes to telling tales, They still remember about their doors And hide their hammers and nails. David Lewis Paget
© 2017 David Lewis PagetReviews
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4 Reviews Added on November 26, 2017 Last Updated on November 26, 2017 Tags: storyteller, harmless, magistrate, imagination Author
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