Where End Meets Beginning: Ninth Pale Knight

The Folly

The Legend of the Pale Knight

Where End Meets Beginning

Now, he allows for those romantic fancies

That titillate the female set

Virginia, Trout views with an oblige suited

To a scientific man’s noblesse

Trout, who knows his shutter speeds

And chemical baths—and grades of films

Appropriate for this and that

Disbelieves strongly in this poltergeist

This Roscoe, meant to be the late Bevington

Although…sieving minutiae through his grey cells

He treads a path shrouded by earthly cloud

And asks himself

Would a voice recorded on magnetic tape

Limit one, or rather enhance the effect…?

Yes, muck about with ordinary expectations

As the major has it, and as Trout, so bolstered being thus

Confided to

Gulps down like a khaki pabulum

The enemy has got you, then

They’ll have you doubting what you know is true

Someone has popped a flash bulb

He thinks the familiar thing

Only that searing radiance

By rights, by now would end

A metal chill drives through him like a sword

Trout, on his knees, grapples for the weight

Hung round his neck

This, this, Britannia whispers…

Fail not! Tis your moment of glory, lad

Where End Meets Beginning

The Legend of the Pale Knight page

Poison in the Marrow: Tenth Pale Knight)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)