Hell Hounds and Heralds

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Hell Hounds and Heralds

“Now the bright morning star, day’s harbinger,

comes dancing from the east.”--John Milton.

Harbingers come

in all sizes and

disguises.

They can alert us

to the shifting solstice,

a time to furrow,

or to lie fallow.

They are tricksters,

can be anything

or any one;

an action

or an adjective.

Walt Whitman used its ancient

calling--to harbinge,

          --to lodge.

Back before the before,

when knighthood and the Crusades

were in vogue, they were often

squires, heralds and town criers.

During the Dark Ages, they came

fanged, as rats and reapers,

and death was their gift and embrace.

Sometimes they came as messengers,

and they were slain for their words.

At other times they might have been prophets,

and their sermon was both

celebrated and reviled.

A silver dollar flipping

in the air serves as one,

or a tangled barbed thistle

reclaiming things abandoned.

Even a deep-throated growl

can announce impending disaster,

or the devouring of an innocent.

Even God had to harbinge

Joseph and Mary in a stable of dung

when all accommodations

were filled with other pilgrims.

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Pub