All his mornings
in distant lands,
The fingers of his soul
reach out
Reach out across the empty air
toward home.
As Maximus
Caressed his wheatfields far away
and, like a lover,
Knew their ripeness near...
So Russell, also, sends
the fingers of his heart
Across the sea
toward home...
Always...ever...
home.
For both, as lovers,
know their land
And fingertips,
though made of memory
and longing...
Move in gentle, flowing touch,
and understand.
Heart-satisfied,
his farmer's soul
reclines upon its inward couch
And smiles.

Snowflakes sifted silently
Through the forest all in grey,
Lit by winter's cold, dawn light
Where death had come to stay.
Like slender wooden pillars,
The pines rose up around
The stalking Roman panther
Stepping soundless on the ground.
His eyes were focused, deadly,
On the presence of his prey,
The single thing remaining
As his obstacle this day.
And, panther-like, he padded,
His muscles coiled like springs,
Nothing more could stop him
From finishing these things...

Things that must be finished,
So that his hurried heart
Might undertake the journey,
Might not delay its start.
And there was nothing deadlier
Than that panther waiting...still...
His weapon, poised and silent,
Readied for its kill.

He lay there, fingers curled, into the clodded soil
Between the silent moundings, spent from all the toil
Of riding endless days, of the anguish in his heart...
Would he get to them before the mindless killings start?
And then the sinking, blackly, of his soul into the grave
Of everything he loved...of all he could not save.

It was not just his child, not just his yearned-for wife
Buried in these moundings, no, it was his very life.

The General lay silent in the mounding to his right...
Rome's Protector, too, had given up the fight
Lying lifeless under cloddings, under petal's wilt,
Near beside the garden of the home that he had built.
And the person, lying dreamless, his fingers curled in pain,
He was no longer General, no longer home in Spain.

And in that moment's blackness, when the vultures cried in mirth,
Rome's best soldier left us and the slave was given birth.

Called back, roughly, by hand against stone
Called from the silence where he lay...alone...
Sunlight bursting through a blue sky,
Piercing his soul, his mind and his eye.

He had been closer than ever before
To those flung from his life beyond the great door
Where his heart and his wheat grew all quite unburned
Where everything lay for which he so yearned.

In the deep blackness where he'd let himself go
Ponies still ran and his wheat still did grow.
And fingers, unsworded, brushed seedheads of gold
While the future was open, still yet to be told.

Bring me not back to these regions of pain
Make me not recall what I witnessed in Spain
That day I found that all that I knew
Of myself and of Rome had never been true.

Heal me not, let me journey afar
Down the hill, through the wheat...where they are.
Brushing my fingers through wheat I have known,
Not striking them here on African stone.

Spittle lay upon his tongue,
Contempt rising in his throat,
As, freshly dead, the bodies
Yet had not begun to bloat.
Clapping, yells, filled the air,
Swirling with the flies
That came to fill their bellies
On him who bleeds and dies.
An afternoon of pleasure,
With the wife and with the wine,
Enjoying that they, as well,
As with the flies might dine.
Killing soldiers with their swords
For the Empire...all for Rome...
Had seemed a thing unlike these deaths
He'd reasoned, far from home,
But...this..this killing was pure sport,
A thing o'er which to cheer...
An entertainment, purely,
A time to laugh at fear.
He could not stand the "why" of it,
The way they loved the rot
Of all that might have honor
So he shouted, "Are you not..."
Hating that he should entertain
Should provide them sport so base.
His bile rose, what would it take
This dishonor to erase?
His arms spread wide, laying bare
A heart where lay only pain
That nobility had come to this,
Only loss and never gain.
Required to kill just to live,
No purpose...not more than this...
Abased as far, as lowly,
As a woman paid to kiss.
He looked, amazed, with hatred,
At the crowd who thought him grand,
Then gathering all within him,
He spat onto the sand.

It was the last...the end...
Done only because he must...
This familiar scoop of land,
This almost sacred trust
Connecting home and battle,
Connecting sword and heart...
A thing he'd done for always
Before the fight would start.
But...this...it was the ending,
He could barely bend,
The sand lay so much further
Here...at the very end.
His eyes oft filled with blackness
As the pain grew ever more
And so he reached left-handed
Toward the poppy-sanded floor
That the pain might shake him
Might keep him on his feet
For just a little longer
In the baking summer heat.
The blood was coursing freely
Down his whole left side
And the effort of the reaching
Was the hardest he had tried.
And, yet, he chose to do it
With that hand that hurt him more,
It seemed to fit...to mesh with...
His closeness to the door.
For one last time his fingers
Drew soil into his fist
Sand clinging, shrouding whitely,
As did the morning mist
Lying on his olive groves...
On leaves of his sweet pears,
And like its inward rising
Between him and all the stares.
For there was only Quintus,
Watching...knowing what he knew
Of how death awaited shortly
Before the day was through.
And there was only one life
Left for him to take
If only he could manage
Not to let his fingers shake
And sift the sand before time
Through his fingers, coated white,
If he could hold back somehow,
The coming of the night.
He liked to smell the soil,
Connecting to how well
The wheatseed would find goodness
Or... blood... if he in battle fell.
Not this time he lifted
The handful to his face
But let it fall, unscented,
Back to its poppied place.
Rather like an offered gesture
Upon some coffin tossed
His own...and, yes, one other
If the battle were not lost.
His feet already treaded
The pathway to the gate
But he must do this final thing
If death would hold...would wait.
So his fingers lifted
While the blood ran down his thighs
And he gazed at watching Quintus
With his whole life in his eyes.

Commie's in the garden
Flitting like a bee...
De-petaling the flowers
And squatting in a tree.
Commie's mind went bye-bye
In the arena's dirt
That evil day he tried
Our Maxigood to hurt.

So now he's in the garden
Scuffling down the stairs,
Lookin' in the corners,
Countin' all his hairs,
Haunting chilly places
Where posies will not grow,
Leavin' little puddles
Of icy, melting snow.
Gnashing all his toothies,
'Cause Max is in the wheat
Lovin' up his family
Who came up the road to greet
And welcome home their hero,
Their hubby and their Dad...
But Commie's in the garden,
'Cause Commie turned out bad.

He don't get no wheatfields
Not even just one grain...
'Cause Commie haunts the garden
Quite often in the rain.
He stares up at the palace
And thinks of days gone by,
And sometimes even wishes
He'd been a better guy.
But Daddy didn't love him..
So Daddy hadda go...
And Commie really wanted
To run the Roman show...
And Luci didn't love him...
She loved that Maxi Mus..
Just the thought of Maxi
Made Commie wanna cuss...

His legs were really furrier;
He DID save Timmy from that well....
He sweated from his tongue, you know,
Climbed o'er mountains, so they tell.
His tail revealed emotions,
While Max covered up in shorts...
Stretchy, tight bicycle ones,
Not exactly Roman sorts.
And Lassie seldom killed folk,
At least not on the farm,
While Maximus...well, Maximus...
Caused a great deal of alarm.
Never did our MaxiOne
Save Lucilla from a well.
(Could that be because she kept him chained
In that dimly-lit old cell?)