I was afraid when I wrote it that that reference was going to be a little too obscure, and it looks like I was right.
Too obscure would be if you don't pick it up at all. I really like it when a story forces me to think and the metaphore in itself is both apt and profound. If you are observing a couple from the outside you will just not get all their in jokes. Others readers seems to have connected the dots so perhaps it's just a cultural thing in my case. I gather that this is a famous children's tale in the USA?
If you wanted to make it clearer you could have had Clark recite a line out of the poem so you know that that is what it is.
