I was giving feedback on the talented souls of the Poetry Potientiates when I suddenly realized I needed to post something myself. I was flat out of ideas. So I started with Legolas. Knowing that the world did not neet Yet Another Elf Ode, I cast around for something to make it more original. I had no iidea where this was headed. .

One that looks fair and seems fairer
One that looks foul and seems fouler

I am a fool.

Everyone looks at you
And here I sit, like them
Spellbound for a moment
Watching three fingers
Caress three feathers,
Hold and catch the bead
And nock the arrow just so.
Death in stillness, anticipated.

Arrow green as new spring mead
By golden threads enspiralled
Which hold feathers shaped
and dyed like mallorn leaves.
Someone has painted
A peacock on that quiver
From which your arrows fly--
Say not that the Lady of Light
Lacks mirthful wit.


I am not blind.

Nobody looks at you
And there you sit, detested
Scapegoated, for it is easier
For them to laugh outright
When they don't know what to feel.
Foul fingers fawn bonelessly
On the folds of an Elven-cloak
And for a moment you've forgotten
That the stuff of the Elves burns
You beg for the sake of
the world, your master
And your poor lost precious self.

Pathetic eyes roll upwards
Master, master, don't take it to him
And my skin crawls seeing
The tainted good and ill and hurt
Under skin that looks rotted.
I wonder how many spotted
The terrible scars on your back.
And is there purgatory enough
For your redemption?


I am too ordinary.

Like so many others
I smile when you leap,
Swift and thoughtlessly,
To a rocky perch, freeze.
I look for one who leaves
No footprints on snow.
I revel in the twist of blades
That cut the air like swallows
Skimming a clear still lake:
Slaying should not be
So exquisite an art.


I know too much.

I wish, for a moment
I could have seen
Your inner anguish
And inner victory
Ignorant of what's to come
So I'd believe you were free.
Again they laughed
But maybe a few wept
Understanding how
For that moment you
Were alive again
Instead of a walking corpse.


Loyalty
One tumbles right out of the tale I know
And the one left behind on the cliff
Stands with a face like mine-- WHAT?
The world is changed!
In your hand that jewel
Not yours.


Treachery
One wailing fall from that high place
And you plunge, still damned, pitied
Eyes wide, looking back at master--
The world is changed
Bound upon a finger
Not yours.


Juxtaposition.

You two came together
Once upon a time:
One now worshipped past all reason
One now despised with reasoned pity
(And they'll go home feeling good about themselves
Because they've passed magnanimous judgement
That you're not wholly evil.)
(But are Elves wholly good?)

There was a moment in this tale
Not written, but implied
When the archer stood
At the roots of a tree
And the lost one clung
To the tree's branches
Upside down, hissing,
Hating eyes glaring
At ageless bright eyes
Cruelly untroubled
Cruel with their pity
And naive ignorance
Of the burden you had borne
And whose shadow you still bore.

You and he were born
Not so many years apart.
But the only blood staining his hands
A deer's, perhaps, or from a few miserable orcs.
Yours? Ah, we know why you keep them
Cloaked in mud.

And I wonder
While coaxing you
To come down
Did he have an arrow
Nocked on string?
Did you wish
In your tortured heart
That he would shoot?
Was it a kindness
(or perhaps folly)
That he spared you?

One arrow more:
The world would not be then
As it is now.