Discourse Chronicle

“Smatterwashed Blue” by Joshua Butcher

Walking along the smatterwashed blue,
The traveller under burdening boughs,
He comes, he goes, from where to whence,
A seven day journey for a sovereign sixpence.
A seven day journey for a sick, spent sovereign.
Sauntering jaunt that vaunts him along long ways,
A long way away spies the damsel in grey.
Stay said his companion (within him abreast),
Stay he replied pounding and clasping still.
Flying along the batterbled green,
The traveller over spring sponge tuft,
He goes, he comes, from whence to here,
Left over minding made marked memory.
A long way she sighs in shades of yearn,
Sway swoon says her ghostly complexion,
Swathe not she replied in corporal tones,
And never the Twain shall meet.
And evermore shall the Poe be with us,
There are no Wordsworth our times,
So Swift our past–through the fires of slight.
Will she be rescued, will she be saved?
Will she be colored, no longer grey?
Shaded in red, smattered with blood,
Turns of the tide; sweet summoner flood.

[Thanks, Josh! BK]

category: Humor, Life, Poetry, Rhetoric and Poetics