Can you identify the fairy tale references in this poem by Anne Caston:
Prelude by Anne Caston
Every tree is one tree. That tree
grows in every forest, that forest always
dark and deep, always lying precisely
at the edge of every village everywhere.
Be there lost children, you will
have abandoned them there with a sack
of breadcrumbs; you will have filled
the trees with hungry birds.
Be there a huntsman, you
will have honed the hidden
blade he carries and sent him
in search of a girl’s heart.
Monsters, wolves or witches,
they are yours. Destroying angels,
devils, a crooked mirror on the wall, one
ripe bite of fruit lodged in a throat: yours.
The paralyzing poison. Drifting
snow. A wall of thorns. A coat of nettles.
Likewise, all extinctions. You have
traveled the deep Nothing to arrive here.
It is time.
Sleeper; waken.
Look: there. A tree.
What are you waiting for?
Find a grove of trees, enter it, close your eyes and listen…
