October - The Burn

 

October – The Burn

 

The fetid air blows past,

A marker he follows.

He turns his mule slightly away,

Though it hardly needs encouragement,

The reek has a life to it,

It won’t do to take it fully in the face;

There is no certainty,

That one can remove the odor from the skin.

His quarry is ahead,

Near enough to be marked,

Far enough for caution,

And keeping the stomach down.

The prey before him had become Wrong,

Many causes were proposed,

All unpleasant,

To such as he it mattered not,

They rotted as they walked,

Hungering for healthy flesh,

And uncaring of its kind.

They would not be many,

The Turn was not easily survived,

Some half succumbed in days.

Those that endured,

Did so too long,

And would not be suffered,

To make more like them,

Or worse than that,

If worse there was than their existence.

And so, he would do a Burning,

They easily lit,

Staying long aflame,

With lurid noisome smokes,

Screaming garish embers that they were.

Such was his penance and duty,

To be the village Cleanser,

Though his sin he thought,

Was to be less a fool than some,

Yet fool he may be

To come so close to the foul

He would end tonight.

The breeze still drifts back the way he came,

He must wait on the wind to shift,

He will not assail his village with the stench.

He settles in for the night and a nap,

Tinderbox and fire-arrows to hand.

His mule, already skittish,

Will alert him should any approach.

None will,

He is the Cleanser,

He is allowed his work,

And the solitude he has earned.

Dirty work is ahead,

But for now,

There is peace beneath the stars,

And bright dreams to be had.

He is the Cleanser,

And his work is just.

Cliff Lake 9/25/2024

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