Storms and Fires: First Allied Forces

 

 

 

The Folly

Allied Forces

 

 

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Storms and Fires

 

The hearth, riddled so, complains

The host has taken on a task he might have seen

was never to be ledgered done

Business as usual, for a time…?

I don’t know, he answers the airless remark

of the guest, That I can write today

Nor can I. A game?

Waiting feels like the wireless announcer had said

We are at war

And each chore weighs as the provisioning

Of a little kingdom under siege

If I go to market, will I be the first

To snatch at every loaf of bread?

Can I safely carry off a hoard?

 

The spirit callers are, at war with one man

They have moved their vulnerable to a safer home

They have need, posthaste, of a drawing card

And that lies undetermined

 

The folly

Sited not so foolishly, if its builder’s mad idée

Were vision, and his letters on the threat of moon-men

A canny ruse to provide him solitude

And all the while he had thought of things

Of storms and fires, and ordered the ring of trees

Well-culled, keeping shorn the mound he’d raised

On which to stand his tower

 

One of us, the host observes, not lifting eyes

from the laying of the Ludo board

There are three of us, Virginia says

Shall we ghost-play the fourth?

One of us, of course…

…must declare, by some means

Hostilities, to Falco

He puts a finger to his lips, to shush the writer of romance

I am aware you have the courage of ten

But Virginia, this is not child’s play

Our offence must be minutely mapped

Before we dare advance

 

 

 

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Storms and Fires

Heneglwys

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(2020, Stephanie Foster)