THE PATRÓN, Merit ~ Odin 12 Options

[Psyche]

THE PATRÓN

Indigo evening at the estancia’s homestead:
undulating shadows slink into alcoves,
like black cats a-waiting the witching hour.
Wives gossip round the whispering well
in the pink-tiled patio; scent of magnolia
from bygone romances softens raw realities.

Feigning flippancy, the Patrón remarks
that some of his sheepdogs are wolfish.
They’re cast at night in the Río Negro…
“With stones slung around their necks”.
Lips moving suavely, pride leaps from his eyes
to challenge stilled sounds, hushed songbirds.

Hollow thoughts… I imagine a fingernail moon
indifferently slicing the Austral night’s peace;
feral forms bound in sackcloth shrouds,
sinking under star-filled waters…muffled howls -
perhaps a hound’s prayer for quick release.
I shiver, reach for my shawl from an iron rack.

Servants keep deferential silence;
a couple of farmhands laugh out loud,
flattering the boss. They’d been there…
The Señora glides through a green
door, like a phantom renouncing restive crowds.
Her random gaze probes powers unseen.

In dying light, I stride on ochre leaves
in the outsize, imported park.
Bands of parakeets shatter the violet
hour with derisive screeches,
but fail to trouble my soul. Wondrous
birds whose names nobody taught me
seek perches under menacing dark.

Tucked tight between colonial bedposts,
I stare with marble eyes at rusty rafters.
Canine paws do macabre frolics on rails,
before being gulped into density of night.
In dreams, I dance with daunting specters.
Men's words pierce my heart like nails.

The atonement of dawn brings slumber
and I do not hear the cock crow.

By Psyche

Patrón = boss, only out in the country (not 'patron').
Señora = The boss's wife, mistress of the farmstead.

Copyright: Sylvia Grosso, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2008.

[Psyche]

Thank you, all! More wonderful news for a Spring Sunday....the sun is shining over here!

Hugs, Syl***