So in passing days, I lent to study musical, where Mithril looked on and said only of my perusal of romance and ballad that my heart that beat, must quicken at a glance. Yet he found my malice, and shut himself quiet at a look. But we still had our relations, and while they were […]
November 16, 2011 by Paul McLaughlan
11 ‘Oh! Dalsarion, are you so sure? We know of one another’s voice, true, but to love? How can you proclaim it?’ ‘I maybe young,’ I said, ‘even by my manly terms, but I know when my heart speaks by me. And now it tells me, you!’ ‘You find me fair and easy of face, […]
November 14, 2011 by Paul McLaughlan
9 Soon, he told me, I must be given to the Court. —A tradition, and only as worthy as that, he told me. For, at most auspicious times it was mannered, for one to put forth their lives in service to a crown. He laughed, no, it was not only they who had ever believed […]
November 14, 2011 by Paul McLaughlan
Into this gentle fray, a well known Mithril strode. And at his side, an unknown boy, cast of an un-Elven joy. So a gauntlet had began, where Mithril’s wit and mine were to be questioned most closely. He has his friends ~it is true. Though they were not begging for my introduction. ‘A new boy, […]
November 12, 2011 by Paul McLaughlan
7 A town we pass through, where my mind has wandered with my eyes, I point out a circle of charred stones. And Mithril, ‘Aye,’ ruins of the old-city guild, he says. Standing there in place where once their proud city- father’s hall had stood. In the very olden days, cities came together, it seemed […]
November 11, 2011 by Paul McLaughlan
The season of smoke is upon us— But then, aren’t they all of smoke? The baked pollen of Australian flowers Give us the quite different smell of bush. Our ‘Spring’ less torqued than, bright- Eyed iris tightened by freshened glare. My childhood winters played with A wood-stoked fire behind sooted glass. And what about the […]
November 10, 2011 by Paul McLaughlan
Untitled Tea Making myself, and burning bone to cast china cups, drinking the tea for the love of it. Scrawling messages in pale clay for under- neath the mulch of leaves. Even if it’s only I who will read my future at the end of it. (Thanks to the Ben Zabbia Band for inspiration.) […]
November 9, 2011 by Paul McLaughlan
‘You enjoy telling that one I can tell.’ I claimed. ‘Well of course I do, you should only tell those stories you’d like to hear and how you’d like to hear them! Let me hear no accusations of self-indulgence, if I cackle heartily with my telling, it is my time, and worthy spent. I can […]
November 8, 2011 by Paul McLaughlan
4 ‘So what did you speak of?’ I asked. Later that day. ‘To my brother’s daughter, the future kingdom’s keeper?’ He asked. ‘Yes.’ I blushed. He smiled. ‘Do not answer me with such down-castness boy. ‘Did we speak of you?’ You must ask. And yes, we did so.’ ‘Then what did you say?’ Tell me! […]
November 7, 2011 by Paul McLaughlan
A coach came, flourishing the dust from the ground. Our feet, and the horses hooves, had been too few enough to let our passing escape a dust-cloud’s notice. And the farmers here, surrounding, would never have paid that road much notice, not while the summer’s Sun, responsible for these dry-banks—where winter would make us a […]
November 17, 2011 by Paul McLaughlan
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