Haiku
tumbledown mansion
a strange thumping
beyond the windbreak
botanical garden
red-tailed hawks soar
above the roses
red and gold
kernels
cascade into the hopper
Indian summer
Free
Verse
A Knight’s
Tale
Lamplight flickers red on the armor’s chest.
An evil heart beating, Paulo thinks.
He whisks out his sabre and touches
the quiver of light. If only it were Marco
at the tip of death. Marco who stole
his wife and her fortune. Who wears armor,
a carapace like a scarab beetle.
This armor is a chef d’oeuvre,
created by Zambrano, master armorer.
Even the most skillfully wrought armor
has vulnerable points, perhaps,
under the arms, in the groin, in the back.
He sends for Abasi who lives in the shadows.
No secret is safe from him.
A thousand ducats for the vulnerable points.
A few days later, the hour called gloaming,
Paulo is rushing through a palace tunnel
when he hears a tink against the stone,
a clank of metal against metal,
a hiss that echoes through the chamber.
A huge black scarab looms in his path.
Marco’s armor, but Abasi’s dungeon odor,
slithering steps, raspy sibilants.
I have something for you. Abasi says.
Marco’s sabre. Fashioned by Zambrano.
He thrusts the sabre into Paulo’s tunic,
into the unprotected chest, into the evil heart.
The vulnerable points, he says.
Six thousand ducats. A tunnel of shadows.
Stealth. A poisoned sabre.
