What happens when the characters tumble from their tales? When rhyme stumbles, and the Goose remembers? In this playful and poignant poem, nursery rhymes unravel, fairy tales awaken, and the stories themselves walk past their plots. “Once Upon Askew” is a whimsical reflection on the lives of stories—and those who dwell within them.

---

---

Once Upon Askew

or, The Story That Would Not Sit Still
by Donald S. Yarab

Listen, child—I am the Old Grey Goose,
And I was there when books came loose,
When volumes tumbled, pages flew,
And all the stories mixed like stew.

It started with a mighty thud—
Books falling open, words like mud,
All swirling, mingling, line by line,
Till Alice’s world came mixing into mine.

“Curiouser and curiouser!” she cried,
Right into Cow’s green pasture-side,
Where “Hey Diddle Diddle” used to play—
Now Cow asks questions all the day.

The Spoon caught Alice’s strange delight,
Abandoned dishes, fled by night,
Beneath a moon from whose bright story—
From Carroll’s tale or Goose’s glory?

I squawked from my own tumbled page—
Which book? What tale? What ancient age?
While Cat’s grin stretched across our scene,
Belonging nowhere, everywhere seen.

We passed the wall where once he sat—
Poor Humpty, puzzled, round, and flat.
Though patched, he watches, cracked but clear,
And murmurs, “Not all ends end in fear.”

But one lay still beyond the swirl—
A slumbering, untouched young girl.
The tales all passed; she did not wake,
No prince, no plot her trance to break.
Yet in her stillness, something stirred—
A dream not shaped by spoken word.

We found Red Riding Hood alone,
Her basket lost, her sure path gone.
The Wolf came next—not sly, but stunned,
As if unsure what he had done.
They walked apart, then side by side,
Two stories stripped of fear and pride,
Each wondering if what they knew
Was ever really, wholly true.

So off we walked, this mixed-up crew:
Alice with questions, Cow with moo
That carried wisdom, Spoon with light
From every moon and every night.

Behind us trailed the broken bits—
Half-rhymes and verbs that sought their fits,
Metaphors in mismatched dancing shoes,
Still seeking out their missing clues.

No longer bound by story’s rules,
We’d become something new, no fools—
Not quite the characters we’d been,
Not free of them—but in between.

And hovering above our band,
That smile from Cheshire’s distant land—
A grin that needs no cat to hold,
A question that will not be told.

This is what happens, child, you see,
When stories tumble, wild and free—
They find they’re more alike than not,
And walk together past their plot.