Falstaff and Me
The Unsown Field: Canto 7
October 24, 2019

“How know you, Stahp, so many sailor songs,”
asked Ghoh, “as one who’s rooted to the earth?”

“Because of you, I’m not earth-rooted so!
So to the sea uprooted souls must go.”

“Dark seas, stark means, and faith in this here course,
strange crew… you sing more truly than you know.”

Continued Stahp:

Distracted though she was, Burve interrupted:
“Ghoh’s mouth is foul enough without your howls.
What kind of conscience blights a budding mind?“

“I blight young minds of those who mind
to rip from hearth and home this humble herb.
This task I neither ask for nor accept.
Gang-pressed I am from earth to earthen ship
to sail to certain peril ‘gainst my will.”

Quoth Burve: “Ex-may on eril-pay ‘round Ghoh.”

Quoth Ghoh: “I ain’t born yesterday, you know.
And Stahp, I trust in Burve, who trusts this trail.
Big sister, thought you wouldn’t mind me asking:
Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we…”

Deeper into the woods and through a vale
these vagrants three — plant, boy, and valiant jerk —
did walk with faith in wayward Burve and trail.
Each furlong faith betrayed, their footpath failed,
dissolved with distance until indistinct.

Thought Burve: “Unfairly I’m unfit so far.
What hardly I had I’m hardly to Ghoh.
No parent’s pleasure to placate my fears.
But lacking a leader, he looks to me.
Fruition forthwith I’ll feign to him,
though fearing I failed. My folly, this trail!”

So Burve, while so disturbed, to Ghoh was mute.

Quoth Ghoh: “We should have stayed where Geoffrey was.”

Sighed Burve: “As if one useful thing he does!
To wait for him’s to wait for bread to leaven.
Though eight heads tall, he only musters seven.”

“A teen his age, one head will compensate
ten times a day—”

“—Don’t be so vulgar, Ghoh.
My patience goes to bed before I do.”

“You cannot send to bed what never wakes.”

“We cannot use him, Ghoh, for goshness sakes!”

“What mean you ‘use’ him! Have we been untrue?”

“Young lad, she clearly means,” kibitzed the fern,
“the patsy Geoffrey was to pay the price.
What prize he’d dearly earn would go to you.
What prize and price, you’d have to ask your sister.”

Quoth Ghoh: “I knew it, then! She’s no concern
but for herself! May ogres take and twist her
into a rope until she suffocates,
then gut her hollow till she resonates!
May people say ‘that’s that, I never missed her!’
May everything she touches cause a blister!
May—”

“Ghoh! Enough! And just who delegates
my answers to a fern to make a guess?
Shut up you both! And let me plainly stress:
I do for all of us what I must do.”

Quoth Ghoh: “I won’t shut up! You had the nerve
to take his conscience, too, away from him!”

Quoth Stahp: “To take me from that peach-fuzz wit
I give you certain thanks, though better far
to leave me safe where leaves still grow in Spring—”
Surprised by his own words: “What’s this about?
Have we, unwitting, passed through Autumn’s door?
How were these leaves defeated so in May?”

Indeed you wouldn’t know the time of year,
for where they strayed, the day turned umber-gray.
Now underneath the weight of crushing doubt,
she hears Ghoh say: “Burve, do you know the way?
Burve, truly, did you get me lost out here?”
She answers “No,” but she was born with eyes
that, though of different colors (blue and green),
betray the lapse of naked honesty.

In tears Ghoh says: “To make me disappear
in haunted woods, to just be rid of me!”

She says: “Don’t justify that kind of fear.
Don’t make your accusation be a plea.
Don’t give me reason. Don’t be such a load.”

His crying now turned wailing, she admits:
“I make mistakes more than you know.
I doubled down, doubts were ignored,
too sure this shortcut shouldn’t go bad.
But sobs do stifle safely with me…
…or cry it out; whatever next you do,
just be a help and don’t complain to me.
If you’re too tired to help, crawl on my back.
I promise you, you’re safe while sister’s here.”

Uneasy by her curious warmth, but still
he calmed his nerves and counterfeited grit.
To be a help he even held her basket.
He’d skip ahead, then skip behind, and sing:

“…I need to work on that.”

On such a skip beyond Burve’s range of hearing,
quoth Stahp: “It bodes not well to sing like that,
with malice standing by. It’s on us soon.”

“Why harm us? We have yet to make offense.
My sister’s here to—”

“—Yes, just look at her.
She blundered you and me into these woods,
and knowing this, your sister’s scared to death.
With nought for reason, some folks mean you harm,
regardless what designs you have for them.
Such malice lives here; Burve must get us out.”

“Burve’s right,” quoth Ghoh. “You are a rotten conscience.”
So on he went, then, back and forth in song.
But even as he sang, a sighing fog
began to thicken up the cooling air.

Again foreboding takes her: “Stop that song,
and please come back and hold my hand.
Return the bask—”

“—Big sister does think wrong
to think me tired so soon. I feel so strong
that I can run in circles ‘round you, see?”

“Ghoh, stop that please, you didn’t understand—”

The worn wits of a weary girl!
Her spine stiffens at a sudden click
barely aback of her bracing neck.
She loops and she looks, not a lost second.
Mere bister bosks, not a being in sight.
But, spinning to start, not a scare outdoes:

“Ghoh? … Ghoh!”

No answer, nor a sign of Stahp or Ghoh.
“Please Ghoh, this is no joke! Ghoh, answer me!”
No answer, nor a sign of Stahp or Ghoh.
Now in a panic, circling through the woods,
in desperation, circling through the woods,
what little lay-of-land she has she loses
in all abandon, circling through the woods,
screaming his name in vain and hearing silence,
till strength departs her, circling through the woods…