I
What Dorothy Gale would never know
As fitfully she dreamed of Oz
With whirlwinds all around her reaping Kansas
Was that her beloved Auntie Em,
Just 70 when Baum first wrote the book
Was, as these things sometimes turn out,
Emily Dickinson, bashful poet,
Whose soul would crack had Dorothy
Discovered even one half sprung line
Of Aunt Em’s verse, now hidden round the barns.
She’d married late, to Uncle Henry,
Sprightly at 83 in 1900,
And in a previous life Henry Thoreau
Although he’d upped from Walden Pond
To make his own backyard in the Midwest
Eluding both the taxman and a warrant
Aimed against his type and issued by the feds.
In private, and out of Dorothy’s earshot,
Last thing at night & turning out the lamp
He’d jokingly call Aunt Em “Emerson”.
As for the Wizard and that talking scarecrow shit,
That was just their homegrown, to help the poor child sleep,
Augmenting the pharmacopoeia of opiates
These honest folk would purchase with dry goods
Across the counter in the store in town
Each Saturday, exactly like all of their neighbours,
In order that all strained pains of this rough corporeality
Be when occasioned eased towards transcendence.
Toto still slept on the floor, and knew Miss Gulch next door
Was being eaten by the syphilis bequeath her by her father
Contracted on the trek Out West.
II
Whereas Bailey Park in Bedford Falls,
A handsome real estate development of tidy homes
In rivalry to the slums that Henry Potter rented out
In the carelessly evocative “Potter’s Field” estate,
Had originally been built on the site of a cemetery
In which Harry Bailey, son of the founder
Of the Bailey Brothers’ Building and Loan,
Would have been buried had his brother George
Not even have been born.
It is not recorded anywhere whether or not
They bothered to move the other bodies buried in the cemetery
Before building Bailey Park, so rumours around town
That George was later troubled by haunting apparitions,
Particularly when fighting drunk, should be reckoned
Unsurprising.