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Dave Bonta
the barber of the king
observing the results of chance
is alone in his private wonder
that rites at court grow every day
that the queen’s hand challenges the wind
that a skull is dead to prayers
To make our work last
in my kitchen is
so handsome a trouble.
I have been
a prince come to court,
welcome to nobody.
miscarriage—
a life-like lack of heart
in the court
“Tell me, stranger,
what love should be called.”
The stranger preached the whole book
then went into court.
A drum came by, beating
a strange manner of beat—
now and then a single stroke.
I wondered at what I saw
but did not speak.
Suppose you stood just five feet two,
And had worked your way as a grocery clerk,
Studying law by candle light
Until you became an attorney at law?
And then suppose through your diligence,
And regular church attendance,
You became attorney for Thomas Rhodes,
Collecting notes and mortgages,
And representing all the widows
In the Probate Court? And through it all
They jeered at your size, and laughed at your clothes
And your polished boots? And then suppose
You became the County Judge?
And Jefferson Howard and Kinsey Keene,
And Harmon Whitney, and all the giants
Who had sneered at you, were forced to stand
It was only a little house of two rooms—
Almost like a child’s play-house—
With scarce five acres of ground around it;
And I had so many children to feed
And school and clothe, and a wife who was sick
From bearing children.
One day lawyer Whitney came along
And proved to me that Christian Dallman,
Who owned three thousand acres of land,
Had bought the eighty that adjoined me
In eighteen hundred and seventy-one
For eleven dollars, at a sale for taxes,
While my father lay in his mortal illness.
So the quarrel arose and I went to law.
But when we came to the proof,
A survey of the land showed clear as day