This poem of mine, with allusions to The Wizard of Oz , appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of Phi Kappa Phi Forum.

WHAT’S UNDERNEATH:

AFTER UNTITLED WOOD AND FIRED-CERAMIC PIECE BY MARIA SCOTT

Frail bars, sunk deep in stone tempered by fire

That could reduce a wooden grid to ash

Leaving just the bedrock. We never tire

Of raising cages, walls; we twine and lash

Our rickety contrivings, groove and rout,

Knowing the earth we build on will endure.

What we create to hold life in or out

Will fall, will fail, of that we may be sure,

Consumed at length by fire, flood, slow decay,

Or fresh mischief: for they’ll huff and they’ll puff

And they’ll blow the house down. There is no way

To keep the wolf from the door, not enough

Of straw, sticks, bricks that we can hope to shore

Against time’s ruin. Thus, Grandma prepares

To face the fiend in sheep’s disguise before

Red Riding Hood—known, too, by what she wears

Brings her woodsman, flesh or tin, to spill blood,

Felling Grandma’s bane. And how can we say What grew within the wolf from seed to bud To flower, will not rise up in us someday?

We need diversion and we look elsewhere,

To Munchkins, flying monkeys, talking trees,

Tornadoes whirling us from here to there,

Beyond the rainbow to our destinies.

But when we’ve won through, over, or around

Each hindrance to the Emerald City’s gate

What lurks behind the light and smoke and sound?

Our mortal self, our sad and comic fate,

Pretentious oracle revealing all

Despite congenital dishonesty,

Showing the truth of our fortunate fall—

We own the power of choice that makes us free—

Showing us, too, there is no place like home.

The archetypal shrink, guiding us back

To what lies waiting near the beaten track:

The earthen bed, the pillow made of stone.