A dog sat in Amalgam’s market street
awaiting those who bring the butcher meat.
We know to watch — the dog is in our way —
and still we bark in anger every day.
Category Archives: Amalgam
A merchant with his cart of foreign wares
set up Amalgam’s only winding stairs.
The upper floor of his exotic shop
was safe from thieves, who’d see the stairs and stop.
The ferry on Amalgam’s river Tee
was built of wood from one white maple tree.
The owners of the tree and boat are kin,
and rats replaced the squirrels that dwelt within.
A man with guilty laughter in his hand
was poaching in Amalgam’s hunting land;
he had no legal right to keep the kill,
but fed his guilty hunger with it still.
The fever of Amalgam’s holy rage
has now become a warm and quilty faith;
the gods who trampled devils on the stage
are now a single, silent, subtle wraith.
A period of silence stood between
Amalgam’s two most valiantly fought wars.
During those decades, nothing had been seen:
a sea of _____ between two lettered shores.
A savage from the village over there
came to Amalgam in his savage dress.
We stripped him down to nothing in the square:
he then looked native, no more yet no less.
A lady of a warm and rustic charm:
twelve miles she rowed, Amalgam to her farm,
avoiding all the bandits on the road,
but losing to the damp her floury load.
A lord or lady wrapped in ashy silk
was welcomed in Amalgam’s public hall.
Her gender hidden by his silken mask,
He spoke with love, but still she hurt us all.
A charter from a desert city’s school
refused to mark Amalgam as a town;
he swore it was an ancient, honored rule
that nothing on a stream was written down.