IN  BONDAGE

Tied so tightly blood could scarcely flow

      He nonetheless kept hands clenched into fists,

              And, had they known, his captors in the woods

                        Might have watched more closely what they did.

He did not mean to die this day beneath the falling flakes,

     It was not in his plans that life should cease,

             Leaving all he loved exposed and bare

                        Atop a hillside, green upon a distant Spanish plain.

So, stepping over skulls, avoiding scattered bones,

     He walked quietly, belying fire raging in his core,

             Outwardly calm, yielding even, with only one request

                        That death come to him as a soldier's should.

To men who knew well the way of that

    The asking was not strange, not a thing to be denied

             One of such rank, the winner of a battle scarcely by.

                         They saw him dead already, bade him kneel,

Never thinking, never looking at his eyes

    Where the fire smoldered, intense and visible,

              Where a form, obediently still,

                          Coiled inwardly, readying to strike.

He closed his eyes, waiting, timing, gathering

    To meet a downward-thrusting blade,

               A perfect split-second needed desperately

                          For grasping lightning in his hands.

How could they know it would be by the sword

    The panther would be freed to stalk?

               Not one of them suspected that it knelt there in the snow,

                         Waiting to bend death with bloodied hands.

By Jo Anzalone  8-6-2007

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