Tower and Town, December 2019

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The Highwayman

He’d a hat as red as a rose on his forehead, such little buttons at his chin,
A jacket of bright blood and baggy shorts of flaming fire.
They fitted like the waves of the ocean: his boots were up to the ankle.
And he rode with a deafening pistol,
His sharp sword stabs every innocent,
His radiant smile glistened under the subsiding sun.

Over the butterscotch bridge he stomped and stamped into the kingdom’s lapis-blue basement,
He swerved and curved but found no gold,
He searched and lurched but discovered some feet: who did he see standing there?
But the shortest man in the World,
He wore a crimson zip-up jacket and short teal trousers.

Clip-clop, clip-clop! Had they heard it?
The intense ear-piercing sound of the horse’s hooves.
Clippity-cloppity, clippity-cloppity, in the dark.
Were they deaf that they did not hear?
Up the street of the sunlit hill, under the tunnel
The Highwayman came trotting!
The salmon jackets looked to their lady, who was taller than a skyscraper.

Back, he heaved his foot into panting horse’s stirrup, he announced a curse to the sky,
With the snowy street steaming behind him and his deadly head high in the sky.
Candy-red were his bright spurs, in the light of the moon; merlot-red was his cushioning coat,
When they chased him away on the busy roads,
Down like a dead animal on the highway,
And he splashed in his scarlet blood on the highway,
With the little buttons still at his chin.

Casey