PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

You are a new recruit, and this is a tough assignment.

Better to have it behind you, and hope for a better posting.

Yes---the equipment is old, the fortress is old,

the local food is bad and is priced unfairly too high.

I wonder if the Senate intends to approve the appropriations.

They talk too much there, too many committee meetings,

too many parties---with (you can bet) the finest quality

food and drink, and plenty of it.  I doubt their kitchens

ever run out of ordinary supplies and condiments:

plenty to eat, plenty to quench the thirst, and way too much talk.

You have to accustom yourself to be hated around here.

The locals do not want us here, and they are not hesitant to

express their extreme discontent.  Government is a business---

you and I both know that---and I wonder if the taxpayers'

expenses are worth whatever profits can be squeezed from

this land.  I have served fifteen years---real service,

not just drunken revelries in the officers' quarters---

sleeping on the ground, enforcing the peace, cutting the

throats of our enemies; while our own throats are strangled by

the administration's tightfisted selfishness.  

Over there---just as the edge of the firelight's furthest reach---

see that young man?  I think that is Neaniskos:  he was here

yesterday, and the day before.  He introduced himself.  You

ought to see him in the daylight---hair cascading down to his

waist, slender of limb and has graceful in movement as a young

fawn.  No more than thirteen or fourteen years old, and

usually a boy that beautiful, in a place like this, is rather

skittish.  He told us he was born in Nain---I have heard of

it, some village in Galilee I suppose.  Yes, he is a very

long way from home, but did not seem to be much bothered by it.

We shall be off duty after dawn:  maybe you can make his

acquaintance.  You are not that much older than he is, perhaps

you have more in common with him than you know.  I suspect

he is "that way," too, and I am sure you are---but do not fear,

I will not tell the others.  I need you here and able-bodied,

not beaten to death or crippled and unfit to walk a post.

Neaniskos is his name:  remember that.  He is not just another

pretty face, with the kind of body no one easily forgets:

something more about him than I can describe.  But my

interest is strictly a bystander's curiosity; I am not "that way."

What?  What?  Yes, I hear that too, that vibration---I feel it,

too, under the very ground where we are standing.  Look at the

tomb, light around the edges of the stone that blocks the door.

No, that is not from the fire, our fire is not that large.

That glow---it reminds me of starlight---it comes from inside the

tomb.  What is going on in there?  Better draw your sword:

I do not understand this, not at all, and that frightens me

more than the knives of the Zealots, or the wrath of Pontius Pilate.

I feel the chill bumps rising on my skin, even though the air

has been sultry all night.  Keep calm, keep calm:  no reason to panic.

Starward

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