The Guard and the Trader and Mage

  • The Guard and the Trader and Mage

    An elk, a strong and fervent spirit

    glides across the expansive dusk,

    night comes to the tundra

    and the trader, down on his luck

    continues on the old cobble path.

     

    The guard, ever watchful,

    keeps his eyes not astray

    though he cannot keep himself from

    starlight views, nor can the mage who say

    “Each of these,

    a magnificent star,

    a light of magic in the Aether afar,

    is my source of power at night

    when the sun’s sweet Magnan rays

    do not alight.”

     

    And the farmer, who returns from a long

    evening's work,

    his leeks all aligned,

    his hoe stuck in the dirt,

    enters the bar that the fair maiden keeps

    his questions interrupted by the

    splashing of drink,

    at the table across,

    where the old warrior gazes at the sight

    of the bard who sings,

    and keeps spirits light,

     

    like the wind, that had come earlier that day

    and swept over the tundra-elk’s back,

    who drinks from the clear blue pond as he may,

    and, unlike man or mer, declines to ever look back.