Pacing cobbles ‘fore a wooden gate
Facing left then right; pacing late
’til he spies a churning cloud of noisy dust
Filling road and meadow like a swarm of crazed locusts

A moonlit night, his lantern bright: An easy catch!
A danger espied in time’s no threat, he must merely fetch
his fellows, rouse the town to lower their defenses
and
hole up a careful minute ’til this violent madness passes

He runs he shouts he points he says look how ominous
Shutters clatter open. “Oh, yeah! Wow! That is obvious!
If we let that in, we may never again choose who comes and goes
Certainty’s a thing for memoirs, but we’ve got enough to know
what must be worked and won
before the rise of the sun.”

And so they spilled out onto the street but someone said
Now, wait, that watchman’s from the other side. Let’s go back to bed!
The throng jostled forward and back until the people got sleepy
and some made learned speeches about how the watchman’s real creepy
They set the meeting time for sun-up and promised an honest debate
Morning came and the orators were ready guide the many, to shift their weight
“I tell you what! They say that a cloud of crime is coming near.
But we all know that that’s not something that can happen here.
I mean, the colors of that beautiful swirling orb are ours —
of course that watchman’s faction would invent this spurious charge!”

They debated as the cloud grew darker larger louder more lethal
But soon Faction A declared Faction B to be the only real evil
And those with no time for politics shrugged their shoulders and said
“Well, he said, she said, in the end, everyone puts truth on its head.
So who can say? Anyway, they’re right about one thing: this doesn’t happen here.”
Faction B trembled. They panicked. They grew desperate to share the fear
that they were certain was sensible to feel.
But there weren’t enough of them to turn the wheels
that release the latch to drop the gate
before the storm enters and it’s anyway too late.

Whose fault?
The ones who lied?
The ones who preferred elaborate lies to the plain truth?
The ones who panicked and couldn’t make their case clear enough?
The ones who “knew” that everyone was lying anyway?
I don’t know.
Maybe they’ll get lucky.
Maybe the storm will die down.
Maybe it’s a mirage.
Maybe it can’t do too much damage anyway.
Maybe.
But
The citizens had one duty
To pay a little attention
To be a little honest with themselves and others
To close the gate when an obvious danger threatened all of them
But I think Faction A is trying to close the gate mostly
on the days when people from Faction B might want to come home
And otherwise, any talk of shutting the gate is clearly just
people from Faction B trying to cheat

Author: BW/AW
Editor: AW/BW
Copyright: AMW