Charles Saplak
 
 

SEEN DURING THE JOURNEY
FROM ABBASID
 

On a windswept mountain trail,
beneath a midwinter's moon,
milk-blue and smooth as glass,
a weary knight, his head nodding,
lulled by the hooffalls of his steed,
slumps and stares ahead
through the steaming mists
of his own breath;
spys a figure hunched over beside the trail,
as quiet and still as death.

Sir Colm reins up and sighs
for such figures he has seen before,
many times on this pass.
Some, the phantoms of his fellow Christians,
flayed and beheaded, existing as shades.
Others are mocking echoes,
nobles and clergy from his homeland,
strategists and preachers, mulling emptyheaded over maps.
Others are some of the hundreds of Saracens
that Sir Colm's sword and lance have sent to Hell.

Then the knight breathes in relief, for
this is no ghost; his horse sees it, too.
They amble forward, and in pale
light of the glassine moon
Sir Colm scowls over the scene before him:
A man, frosted over beside the pass,
coated in ice, skin blackened and split.
At the man's reaching hands, a stack
of stones; a toy of a castle of which he dreamt.
And at his back, a lean-to uncomplete,
and sticks for a fire, never lit.
 

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