We thought the arrows of love
would guide our wars to peace
in the fields where our old fathers fought
with tempered blades across the helms
and banners of dark armors. What we
didn't consider involved a dream
of gentle fingertips withstanding
a blacksmith's ax, of the song of lorn
minstrels marching battilions with the
strength of cherished loves across
the glens of elderberries and bramble roses.

A warhorse chortling in snorts of steam
across the ancient steads, rider emblazoned
with the crenelation of sculpted artifice,
the true banners kept inside within the
butterfly of his lungs that breathe for
one wind, where his lost kinsmen had
scarcely felt movement. A broken breastplate
caked in rust splattered fine as sand
by the sea wind, yet the real armor kept
beneath in ancient future of divinities
wrapped in leather harness and buckled with
angel knots. His lance-banner, tattered yet
loose, snapping the color red through the horizon.

We felt the after-war in echoes of king edicts
in the time before fame produced its siren face.
A maiden wandering in woolen rags within a shawl
of frost could scarcely lay claim to a bouquet
of swords. The bear-baiters losing hands and fingertips
to the gamble of their amusement. A castle sitting
heavy with acrid lime and marbled granite. Arrow louves
that eye travelers as warnings. And it seemed
to sing nothing of our cherry-stained lips that licked
the pollen air after the clearing of death's dust about
the diminished thrashing of green calvary.

In the somnolent goblets of red wine
our laughs seemed made for this earth
as the halls unfurled their banquets
and the alchemists spoke their beautiful curse
of wealth upon our heavy-lidded helms.
Wenches stayed with men, the perfume of wreaths
woven from rosehips rubbed upon their slender wrists.
Soldiers marked by war, we laughed and smiled
at the witch's cry of arms raised, though no
man held his blade.

Our knight in worn armaments wandered through the magician's ring
and as he did our banquet seemed to sing of the halls where the wizard
worked to bless our humble sacred town.