Fairy Tale

The little elf is dressed in a floppy cap

and he has a big rosy nose and flaring white eyebrows

with short legs and a jaunty step, though sometimes

he glides across an invisible pond with a bonfire glow on his cheeks:

it is northern Europe in the nineteenth century and people

are strolling around Copenhagen in the late afternoon,

mostly townspeople on their way somewhere,

perhaps to an early collation of smoked fish, rye bread, and cheese,

washed down with a dark beer: ha ha, I have eaten this excellent meal

and now I will smoke a little bit and sit back and stare down

at the golden gleam of my watch fob against the coarse dark wool of my vest,

and I will smile with a hideous contentment, because I am an evil man,

and tonight I will do something evil in this city!

Ron Padgett



This poem, though short is very interesting. You think it's all happy and joyful until you read toward the end. It has a dark twist that completely unexpected. My creative writing class enjoyed this as a choice of poem's to bring in and it wasn't until after I had that class what a treat it was to come across such a unique poem.