He imagined himself a knight-errant,
long after the
knights had retired, the round table
sold at auction,
and the quest but a vacation to Madrid,
the stuff of myth
and legend, the truth of it so far
removed as to
question its reality, characters too big
to have been real
men, and damsels in distress
no longer needing
rescue, strong women now
in search of rich
husbands and a lover on the side.
But the wizards
and giants called out from the pages
of his books, the
injustices of humanity in search
of a hero to take
up a sword and lance, and Rosinante
charging full
tilt, old and slow and tilting, too,
towards the
windmills, their giant arms waving, but evil,
as evil does,
turned itself into the common, only windmills
turning, grinding
wheat to flour, but, enchanted, grinding men
beneath their
giant heels with sorcery, trickery,
false perceptions
of the reality we face and fight and run
from, giving up or
rising stronger to fight another day,
going onward, to
continue the quest and, thus blessed, become
the hero of our
own stories, read over and over, the realities
of our lives lived
in the face of windmills turning,
turning us into knights-errant rescuing ourselves.
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