Beauty and the Beast

The picture book my father bought
and brought home from a business trip,
I laid it in a carboard box,
your name upon the packing slip,

my name still written on the flap—
a book too precious not to share
for when your daughters fill your lap—
dead-lettered in its box somewhere.

As parcels under letters lie;
or under leaves old years' debris
remembering how they touched the sky,
communing with the new year's seeds;

and old selves lost to new ones made
responding to the seasons' turn;
so Beast lies dying in the glade
unless—until—his love returns.

Read out the story, then: She comes
to cradle his beloved mane,
and when she tells him of her love,
the handsome Prince is whole again.

The end.  Now read it out once more.
Today the postman brought your box.
Beast rises from the forest floor
where nothing's ever really lost.

Batten - Europa's Fairy Tales By John D. Batten - Books, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31130471

Go HERE to see illustrations from the book this poem was written about, Beauty and the Beast, by Marianna Mayer, illustrated by Mercer Mayer.