The Sentence

     Now for something completely different…

I do hope you will like it,

Jake.

“I Sentence You to..”

The Sentence

“What say ye gentlemen,

tis it to prison, or nay

for this cur that I see,

afore me today?”

*

And thus to my peers,

his Honor did ask.

And his loathing for I,

made no effort, to mask.

*

Charged with a theft,

in which I held no quarter,

but only guilty of thieving,

the love of his daughter.

*

So a scheme it was planned

then set unto play,

and some goods, they said stolen,

to my lodgings, found way.

*

Then I was arrested

upon my return.

While the sheriff, no wish

of the truth to be learned.

*

Left shackled in a place

of iron and stone,

and allowed not a soul

nor a voice, but my own.

*

With no counsel permitted,

the food rotted, and spare.

And with lice then infesting

my beard and my hair.

*

I sat and I pondered

for God knows how long,

 with but the thought of my true love,

be keeping me strong.

*

Then taken was I,

for a bath and a shave.

Where a note sneaked from her,

urged me on, to be brave.

*

Now the courtroom was empty

save the judge and the six.

Wherest the sheriff continued

with his dastardly tricks.

*

“Your Honor” had said he

“this man’s sure the thief,

and guilty as charged

so be my belief.”

*

So when faced to the court

for my final say,

I spoke only in truths

and hoped the jury, to sway.

*

Well, when the jury returned

in less than a trice,

eyes averted from mine,

like so many mice.

*

Not a man there amongst them,

I knew in my heart.

And the life that we’d planned,

would be then, torn apart.

*

And thus the question was posed,

and the foreman then stated,

’twas “guilty” said he,

so now my fate, I awaited.

*

The eyes of the judge

said no mercy to spare.

 But as he stood to announce

came a voice loud, but so fair!

*

“Father” she said

“he’d not committed that crime,

for he’d laid down beside me

at the sheriff’s said time!”

*

“So if you send him to prison

and from me take away,

I will speak to you not

for the rest of your days.”

*

Then I saw that those eyes

had given way, to some thought.

Had his daughter succeeded,

where the truth, it had not?

*

Then he looked at me square,

and asked “if she’d be my wife.”

When it was “yes” I proclaimed,

he pronounced my sentence “be life!”

***

Jack Downing

Oct. 2012

Copyright© Jack Downing, aka Jake @poemsandponderings.wordpress.com. All rights reserved. Contents may not be reprinted or disseminated in any manner without the expressed written consent of the author. JRD. 4/3/13