The Gumblers - A Children's Tale

These are the gumbler stories I tell
Of their lives in a murkey, blackened realm,
Alight with only a beam from above
That glowed on the ground around a well
Those creatures loved the liquids bright
So they cupped them in bubbles of silver delight.

Clink, clunk, clink, clunk
You never heard the gumblers cry,
Their eyes were fixed and their faces, sunk,
And not one of them looked to the lighted sky.

There were three gumbler girls with scrawny hips
And lipsticks that smeared on their thin-cracked lips,
With grim-green necks all draped in jewels,
They drew a slew of gumbler fools
To bewitch them all with bubbles twinkling
Between their fingers, fat and wrinkling.

Click, clunk, click, clunk,
You never heard the gumblers cry,
Their eyes were fixed and their faces, sunk,
And not one of them looked to the lighted sky.

There was a giant mole with crooked hands
Carrying buckets of water to lands
Where gumblers wanted more than their share,
Promising one day a bucket he’d spare,
So gumblers came from far and wide
Fastened their chains, and followed behind.

Click, clunk, click, clunk,
You never heard the gumblers cry,
Their eyes were fixed and their faces, sunk,
And not one of them looked to the lighted sky.

There once was a gumbler who chased the mole,
Then fell right into a mercury hole!
And everyone sighed and clucked and said,
“He should have seen that crater ahead,
We’d help him get out, if only we could,
But one mile more and a bucket we’ll hold!”

Click, clunk, click, clunk,
You never heard the gumblers cry,
Their eyes were fixed and their faces, sunk,
And not one of them looked to the lighted sky.

That poor gumbler did sit all night in the pit
Where no one else saw him throwing a fit
He knew not what to do with no light
On which to fix his eyes through the night
He wailed and—yes—he cried, he did,
For waterless, he had never been

Click, clunk, click, clunk,
Was the time I heard a gumbler cry,
His eyes were dull and his face was sunk,
And he knew not to look to the lighted sky.

And that gumbler was sad until he saw
Such a sight he had never seen at all
A gumbler who did not look like the rest
For she held no bubble of happiness
With hands scot-free and skin aglow
Her eyes were locked on a heavenly flow.

Click, thrive, click, revive,
Was the time a gumbler ceased to cry,
His eyes were at rest, and his face, alive,
When he gazed for love of the lighted sky.