Because

[RiverNotch]

Preliminary reading here, not enough for a critique, but you making it explicit that "poplar tree" is a reference to "Strange Fruit" ruins that line for me. It feels wrong to make such an off-hand reference to the horrors of lynching in a poem about Sesame Street, and not where you imagine any of the characters get lynched either---I mean, did Mr. Hooper die because of racism? Maybe he did, but the poem doesn't seem to interrogate it.