Recasting Alice

This is a poem that started out as a Twitter post, but grew into something quite different. I offer it to you with all due apologies to Lewis Carroll, whose Alice I've always admired and whose credit I've repaid poorly here.

My Alice
By Francis Scudellari

Her short, wintry youth,
a fair tale's ending
she windy followed
at the blue-white tip
of a buttoned nose
reaching this fine point
to a bent-fork path
where she stands, then sits
on the glassy edge
of iced-over pond
and looks less than dives
in, to grow unfrocked
by wonders re-versed

Immaterial
things, once-thought, awkward,
perhaps too-weighty,
are pulled thin, stretched tall
and golden snake give
her skeletons form,
a key gently grasped
that she inward turns
unclocking spun minds
to lithely chime up,
out of darkly twists
where they holey lay
fixed, for her "so-long"