Bedtime Stories of Wizards for Daughter, Saint George, Utah, 27 October 2018

A world in which the apparent rules of the world
Wobble and fail to hold would be a world
In which the rules were really only rules, as in
Our human games, and not features of the world.
We, the creators of rules and the players
Of all their games, would like such a world,
And so one of the games we play a lot
Is the one in which we fabricate various worlds
We would prefer to live in more than the one
That has actually generated us and our lust
For rules and games. We never wholly succeed,
Of course, and are never wholly satisfied because
We keep finding that our little games of worlds
In which the world is made of games are
Becoming infected by verisimilitude, the enemy
Of games with only rules to constrain them.
The wizard that I am confounds the wizard
That I wish I were by behaving as if there is
No power at all in wizardry, and it slays me.