National Poetry Month: Day 3

Written for a collection due for release at the end of the year, and shared in honour of National Poetry Month:

A Mystery of the Smiling Swamp

Written on April 3, 2018, for the February 11 entry of Another 365 Days of Poetry, this fantasy piece is themed with trolls and swamps, and the mystery of a vanished hero.

On the shores of the Smiling Swamp

the trollman came and saw

the livid roiling waters looking like Hell’s maw.

In armour made of dragon hide,

he came and contemplated

the way the waters boiled and shook,

until his curiosity was sated.

The Smiling Swamp, a beast untamed,

a wild land no one controlled,

the troll knight stretched, his mind made up.

He’d never wanted to grow old.

He stood upon the shore and roared,

his voice a rolling challenge

that echoed through the swampy sward,

forshadowing the trollman’s war for a land to be avenged.

Blood flows green in the Smiling Swamp,

but it flows red as well,

and the gas that gives the marsh its name,

has no colour and no smell.

Some say the troll knight vanished

eaten by that hellish land,

and others say he conquered

a tiny portion of its domain,

but no man has ventured past its banks,

to find the truth within,

to see if the trollman vanished

or if those new nightmares are his kin.