Ursul’s Fyst
From across the table and with a bent brow
So strongly stacked that it almost broke her nose,
She raised her battered mace;
Blue veins rolled on her thumb knuckle.
After she shook the emptiness in her fiver
With a gall that galed,
She gaveled the Boardroom Altar;
In that blow, my blatant blandity was nailed,
But seeing the powered sprites
That light-shouted out from her hammer's halt,
My fear suddenly tore free,
—and me with it, in-flight--
As her face-howl hunted through my mind after me,
Chirking blurred echoes from archway to archway,
As her monster eye spy-chased the little me
That ran through un-mined catacombs.
When she finally cornered my inner ear,
—and the mouse-soul I had ran with--
The true import of her tone had already
Checkmated terror up every sherd-way of my bones.
With pure intent of rage, she sure-stepped forward:
Slowly she unfurled, 'step by step, inch by inch,'
Her breath still heaving...but somehow,
With great angsty within her age-flogged frame,
She control-stopped just short of mammothizing
The place where I flinched.
Her mace clunked dead on the flooring,
And in poise that matched all her writing years,
The old crone sterned her wrinkled face
Into that social distance of my existence,
Smiled once, painfully, as she said, 'Sing...it...right."
* Forty-one years ago, Ursila shook her fist at me, following my reading of one of my poems at our Tacoma Writer’s Club. She had liked the power she saw in my lines, but I had been too novice to read it out. In our tour of comments, she let her 81 year old fury fill my mind as she let me nicely 'have it.' I treasured every moment I spent in her presence after that evening.
**Fyst, O.E. fist.
From across the table and with a bent brow
So strongly stacked that it almost broke her nose,
She raised her battered mace;
Blue veins rolled on her thumb knuckle.
After she shook the emptiness in her fiver
With a gall that galed,
She gaveled the Boardroom Altar;
In that blow, my blatant blandity was nailed,
But seeing the powered sprites
That light-shouted out from her hammer's halt,
My fear suddenly tore free,
—and me with it, in-flight--
As her face-howl hunted through my mind after me,
Chirking blurred echoes from archway to archway,
As her monster eye spy-chased the little me
That ran through un-mined catacombs.
When she finally cornered my inner ear,
—and the mouse-soul I had ran with--
The true import of her tone had already
Checkmated terror up every sherd-way of my bones.
With pure intent of rage, she sure-stepped forward:
Slowly she unfurled, 'step by step, inch by inch,'
Her breath still heaving...but somehow,
With great angsty within her age-flogged frame,
She control-stopped just short of mammothizing
The place where I flinched.
Her mace clunked dead on the flooring,
And in poise that matched all her writing years,
The old crone sterned her wrinkled face
Into that social distance of my existence,
Smiled once, painfully, as she said, 'Sing...it...right."
* Forty-one years ago, Ursila shook her fist at me, following my reading of one of my poems at our Tacoma Writer’s Club. She had liked the power she saw in my lines, but I had been too novice to read it out. In our tour of comments, she let her 81 year old fury fill my mind as she let me nicely 'have it.' I treasured every moment I spent in her presence after that evening.
**Fyst, O.E. fist.