The Widow Wyile has long fallen
into a fairly predictable twisting
and sometimes flailing fairy
tale filled with seemingly impossible tasks
surprise
            sur-par-rise
for the course
in which small hard balls roll
far        far                                away
to lie hidden
in the ever-growing grass
and sense
can be even harder to find… 

once upon this present time
a frailing yet strong
well-aged woman and man
lived in a capital city
that thought very highly of itself
and yet beyond a strained emergency
ward had but three walk-in clinics
open but some fraction of time
offering medical help to but some of the hundreds
            or thousands
without physicians they could call
their own        a sign of collapsing times
compounded by absurdity
for into the clinics called walk-in
no one was to walk in
without an appointment
called in by telephone
that would ring and ring and ring
or beep and beep beep beep
the single line being flooded by hundreds
or thousands of calls from the needy
of which maybe one
might get answered per minute
for the scant half-hour it takes
to fill the day’s roster with the lucky few
leaving the rest to try
their luck again next day
or cry into their brimming
buckets 

Just so Jack
or Jill
must fill a sieve
with a gallon of fresh river
water
or draw milk from a stone
or fetch a seven pointed
star from the mid-summer sky

these things all can be done
though it be far
from a parent
to know how
when or why
they or their child
at wits end
weary yet willing
to find a solution
which is farther away
than they thought
that takes more time
than seems sensible
for it do be far, Jack
way up over the hill
and around many a
bend, Jill
but the thing can be done
if you take chances
keeping faith
in yourself
and long odds
and your eye
out for that wee
hard ball
of favour
awaiting
its finding
      patiently
      as must be
in the verdant
grassed over place
it got to