Grim(m)

It is a scary trip lost boys and girls make
before the hint of any happy ending.
First the march, the falling, the aloneness
through poisoned apples, wicked stepmothers,
black, cracking-branch woods.

On my trip to Germany, I sit
on the deck of my river-cruise ship
watch towns drift by.
Here the wolves are hidden
but I know they lurk.
Or I tramp through guided-tour towns
always a brewery, a half-timbered rathaus,
shiny children with backpacks,
a castle full of rusted armor and bad family portraits,
a church with a huge clock.
This is the Disney version.

The Grimms went at it differently.
Thorns, boiling, slicing off toes, sleeps that lasted years.

Their stories make us shake.
Scariest are the true ones.
There is a Hameln town.
On June 26, 1284, 100 children disappeared.
Some say it was a plague,
others the work of Dracula,
or a purge of pagans.
Or a piper.
Clues lie all over these German towns,
plaques and pamphlets describing
more than legend.

And the stumbling stones
tiny blocks on the cobblestone streets
at the last known voluntary address
of those Holocaust victims
rounded up, led off,
locked up, starved,
diseased, gassed, shot.

Stories that remind us
how people disappear.
It was a dark time, the tour guide says.