The Poet's Company

               "The Poet's Company"
                   -by Megan A. Johnson   02-24-2014

The poet, sitting silent and still...idle, it would seem, to the careless eye...

Arrayed about her...a motely and fair company...ringed, and ringed again, round
and close about her...

She holds a pen in hand...hovering softly over her parchment...the pen's tip
a mere breath of a kiss from the pale vellum's smooth surface.
She sits...staring...not quite vacantly, into the flame of the nearby candle.
Her mind's eye cast adrift in a fairer country...set loose to wander and toil in
that glimmering twilight.

Her curious company...nearly holding it's breath...eyes sparkling with ill-concealed
mischief...and cunning purpose.

...Frozen on a single heartbeat.

Then, a dazzling figure, with a single shining star upon her pale brow,
steps forth from beyond the light of the flickering flame...unseen and unheard...
lightly setting her delicate hand upon that of the transfixed poet...

And they begin to write....slowly and hesitantly at first...
pauses here and there....lives lived in heartbeats...
and then quicker, almost furiously, the pen racing across the surface
of the sheaf of pale and unmarred parchment.  
Leaving a frenzy of hastily scrawled words and phrases in it's
ink-stained path.

The figure standing near, with delicate hand over ink-stained hand,
smiling and intent upon the scrawling pen below...

....."Gaily dancing round and round in a circle....
faster and farther..."      ~