King of Shadows

He spoke to me down where the wild thyme grows:

‘Good fellow, do my bidding in the night.

Return before the randy rooster crows

at the dismal dullness of midsummer’s light’.

So down I danced and heard a silly song

sung by an actor who seemed asinine

(perhaps I have remembered this all wrong

but he looked to me just like old Kevin Kline).

Then as I crept down past the eglantine

I spied a sight that stilled my rowdy heart:

a fairy on a bank of celandine

with something puckish troubling her heart.

I know that our two hearts should never rhyme

though we both know they syncopate in time.