A Knight At His Leisure You take your leisure, a noble knights natural right. While I, lowly peasant wench must care for your needs before my own. Squalling infant at hip toddler at  hem, my temper boils hotter than the pot in which your dinner cooks. This has been the way, centuries over. Your feet rest near the hearth and hound, tongue lolling, adoringly watches. A foot taps like a magistrate at the door. Insistently, impatiently -- tap, tap, tap -- All the while, the babe cries.  A wet nappy? I smell foul sulfurous smoke? I rush to see -- a dragon at the moat! “Come! Quickly from your leisure, Sir Knight!” “The draw bridge is aflame and dragon at the gate!”  “What!! You would have me slay him myself as well as all my other duties!” “Fie on thee!  May the dragon eat you and wear your tarnished armor as an earbob!” By:  Graci Copyright 2001--Lorrie S. Workman Return to Graci's Malebasher Poetry