Innkeeper

The night that brought strangers, I remember
the birth-pains of passing time
I feared for everything and in my dreams
I was frantic.

Whose plan? Certainly not mine
going out after the door was bolted for the night;
the banging pulled me from the fire
slurring reluctance.

Maybe we shall never know
why I left the comfort of wine
something perhaps of the contagion of urgency
yet I resented their persistence
even as I led them to the place
passed the last of the houses
at the very edge of town

and anxious to return
to the old way of doing things
to the warmth where
the woman rattled her pots and the boys had
returned from the stable
having laid the new hay and broken the ice.