• Fairy King in the Court of Fools

    I was a Fairy!
    A member of Elven Court
    though never by birth.

    I leaped through a gate of woven dreams like mirror's glass
    into a dry forest of towering grasses
    taller than sight and twisted
    like tunneled mazes
    through which I explored
    Searching for nothing but the intoxication of
    adventure
    discovery
    danger
    the unexpected
    and stumbled upon the Palace of the Fair Folk.

    In disguise I entered
    Boldly to mingle among the strutting Elves in their frippery
    Their flamboyance a mockery
    of Human aristocracy
    Made even more so by their own ignorance of this farce.
    You are more human than I, I marveled
    with amazed abhorrence, observing rapt conversations
    concerning the slaying
    and serving
    of the Unicorn
    for the feast's main dish.

    Disgust
    Dismay
    Disappointment
    Why have we wondered and sung through all the ages
    about these base and posing fools?

    But my new sense of contempt withers
    and my confident bearing wilts
    as the Court is graced with the entrance of its King.
    No mere trickster is he
    stealing children from beds
    or souring fresh milk.
    Wise as the Bard Taliesin
    Authority like proud Oberon
    A true King with dignity, and no man's fool
    with his eyes like black stars
    brimming with mischief and delight,
    I felt a child
    caught playing in its parent's clothes
    by those regal eyes so bright.

    Would that I could have heard him speak!
    If only my fear of my mask being shattered
    had not my thoughts scattered on panicked wings,
    if only that stray shaft of morning Sun
    had not brushed my bowing eyelids.
    For during that brief rousing from the realm of sleep
    some foreign will seized and moved me with sword
    in hand to strike at that majestic lord.
    Still, yet still,
    he smiled right at me
    as if I were no enemy
    those black jewel eyes glittering merrily
    at the challenge.

    Would he have won?
    I will never know
    Inwardly wheeling with horror
    Reviling myself for a greater fool
    than all those silk-headed courtiers
    I surged back to the Sun
    my mind spinning
    with what might have been.

    And still
    at times I look at my hands
    and wonder

    Are they stained
    by noble Magic's blood?