Committed

The shadows from the trees stretched long
across the grass, like a black gate,
and though he was a boy, bold and strong,
he was also uncommitted, so he did not wait,
for it was the gate to Faerie, just beyond
and he knew that a people who opened a gate
at sunset were not, in truth, much overfond
when welcoming guests at an hour so late.
If they invited strangers upon their lawn
in the darkening of the Twilight
rather than the lightening of the Dawn
they were peoples of the Night,
and, so, folks a good Christian should shun—
therefore his brisk walk became a frantic run.

He heard the silver notes of the chimes
and the strumming of gold-stringed lutes;
he heard the laughter and the rhymes
and the happy piping of their flutes,
and he ran all the harder, at full sprint,
racing toward the setting sun,
coming, at length, to his tent
and entering as the day came undone.
He created a fire in the pit
of the tent, to keep himself warm,
and as his tent’s canvas was thereupon lit
he saw shadows dancing in a swarm—
saw the shadows twirl and whirl
with many a comely fairy girl.

Around and around they danced,
playing their songs and whispering,
and a curvaceous fairy laughed and pranced,
calling to him to kiss her ring.
“Come kiss me, child,” she sighed and cooed,
“do not abandon me to be forlorn.”
She promised him things most lewd,
but he held his silence until the morn.
He spoke only to say a prayer,
repeating the words ad nauseam,
denying that he wished to see them bare
even as he knew he wished to see them—
see their curves and their skin
gleaming in the sweat of sin.

When the sun rose, at last,
he heard Fairies no more ‘round his tent
and so he opened the flap, running fast
past standing stones, to his village in Kent.
As he ran away from the glade
his mind and heart ran contrariwise,
longing for a pact to be made
with a Fairy maiden with silken thighs.
Arriving in town, he found things changed
and saw a man riding a horseless carriage
and he thought himself, therefore, deranged
and regretted not accepting a Fairy in marriage—
when he told his story, with nothing omitted,
law enforcement had him committed.