For Corwyn and Domhnail, Their Excellencies Septentria

Laird Colyne Stewart, Feb AS 37 (2003)

Domhnail is the swift-foot,

She is the flashing shield;

She with flowing raven hair

Striding on the field.

She has a sword of honour;

Great pride is placed upon her—

Domhnail is our Lady of the Bear.

Tall Corwyn is the oak-thewed,

A giant of the north;

With gentle hands and humour,

A bellowed laugh comes forth.

He has a sword of courage,

Standing on the pine ridge—

Tall Corwyn is our new Lord of the Bear.

They bleed upon the red field,

And tend to fallen kin,

Give the largesse of their hands,

Arms gather people in.

They have two swords of true love,

The kind the sonnets sing of—

Together they the new Heart of the Bear.

They gather to them households,

Band the folk with iron,

Call to them the ursine,

Call them to good fortune.

They have two swords of power,

Protecting trillium flower—

Together they the new Claw of the Bear.

We scarlet people gather

To them we bend our knee

Bright future seen within them

They shape our destiny.

We the sword of loyalty

To the Bear’s nobility

Together we the Spirit of the Bear.

Tall Corwyn and Domhnail

Lead us and will not fail—

Together they personify the Bear.

Together they personify the Bear.

Don Capo Plays Bocce (at Aeneas and Aibhilin’s Handfasting)

Colyne Stewart, Sep AS 38 (2003)

Four people stand upon the grass

And gaze upon the can of trash,

the white jake sparkles by the tin--

the one that all the trash is in.

The don, he stands in dinner coat,

his beard as manly as a goat's,

his tails flapping in the wind,

his knees bared bright above his shins.

In his hands are balls of green,

his eyes contracted, hard and mean,

he contemplates the weight and lay

of other balls laid in his way.

A burly arm is brought far back,

Hairy knuckles on the ball's hide crack,

Then like an ape upon the mound,

he rolls his sphere along the ground.

It leaps past foes and o’er the ditch

that makes the course into a bitch,

stops right beside the jake to rest

and we know the baron's balls are best.

"At the crack of dawn, my Baron bends..."

aka I Bask in the Sunlight of my Baron’s Behind

Colyne Stewart, May AS 38 (2003)

At the crack of dawn

    my Baron bends.

A shaft of light

    there then descends.

A morning moon,

    a gentle wind;

My Baron bent

    in beardy grin.

No barony is as bless'd as mine,

From whom's Baron's arse the sun does shine.

(The author places partial blame for this on the Lady Thorfinna gra'feldr and Countess Marion FitzWilliam for coming up with certain analogies whilst within earshot.)