Don Diego’s Moonlight Walk
As Don Diego walked
along a haunted moonlit beach
the waves whined and bats swooped.
After a few miles
his feet grew quite tired
and a coyote howled from the far pier.
He needed a break
but refused to take one,
pressed on through a flock of banshees.
With determination Diego
maintained a clear mind about
his goal of reaching the promised land.
It would be away from this
blackened shore, from the vexing
psychobabble of a humanity run amok,
where starfish don’t
stare menacingly from tidepools
and call you traitor to all surviving species!
Riddled with remorse
Don Diego wished he could
stream back to his beloved Alhambra.
Once there surely
to be doused in splendor,
rapturous if only for a split second.
But the moon insisted
that to continue he must first
expel nasty demons infesting his soul.
He had but moonlight
to illuminate the way forward
so agreed to this formidable demand
since lacking moonlight
he’d be neither Don nor Diego,
more ghost within a ghost within a ghost.
Thomas Piekarski is a former editor of the California State Poetry Quarterly. His poetry has appeared in such publications as The Journal, Poetry Salzburg,Modern Literature, The Museum of Americana, South African Literary Journal, and Home Planet News. His books of poetry are Ballad of Billy the Kid, Monterey Bay Adventures,Mercurial World, and Aurora California.