Poem: "The Truth in the Tower"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This poem came out of the March 1, 2011 Poetry Fishbowl. It was crowdfunded by a bunch of different people, and originally posted on my LiveJournal. While writing this poem, I did a bunch of research on Italian wildlife and culture. You can find the other poems in the series Fiorenza the Wisewoman on my Serial Poetry page.

One interesting thing is that this poem contains a number of cliffhangers between verses, and some of those came up during the crowdfunding process. That helped encourage more donations. After verse 12 is a notable one, and after 17 another. It's kind of fun to look for these potential cliffhangers in my longer narrative poems, and then watch to see if any of them activate depending on how the donations come in.

"The Truth in the Tower"


A shadow swept over Fiorenza's garden,
sending her chickens running for cover.
The herbalist looked up from her tilling,
expecting to see a low-flying eagle,
but instead saw a high-flying griffin.
"Well," said Fiorenza to her hens, "That's new."

By Sunday the priest was bragging
that the griffin had settled in their parish.
He even worked it into the sermon:
"The griffin combines the strength of the lion
with the wisdom of the eagle," said Don Candido.
"Its dual nature symbolizes Jesus Christ,
king of heaven and earth, so it stands for salvation.
The griffin is sacred and we are blessed to see one."

While Fiorenza bent over the parish herb garden,
helping Don Candido to prepare it for seeds,
he nattered on at her. "The griffin has come to me,"
he said. "Have you even seen the griffin, girl?"
Fiorenza snorted. "The griffin has frightened my hens,
Don Candido," she said to him. "I'm afraid
you shall have no eggs this week."

Don Candido was not pleased by that.
He was even less pleased when,
as March turned to April,
the griffin built her nest.

Fiorenza heard a heavy fist pounding on her door.
"Come, girl, come!" shouted Don Candido.
"You must come and help me."
"What has happened?" asked Fiorenza
as she opened the door for him.
"The griffin has nested in the church's belltower,"
Don Candido said. "You must do something,
or I will not be able to summon people for prayers."
"I could brew you a poison," said Fiorenza.
"No, no!" Don Candido protested.
"The griffin is sacred. Do something else!"

Don Candido dragged Fiorenza to the church.
Fiorenza peered up at the belltower,
now festooned with straw sticking out its windows.
The griffin swooped down at them,
making them dive for cover.
Sunlight glinted off her white breast,
her brown pinions also edged with white.

"She is very beautiful,"
said Fiorenza from under the wagon.
"She is very fierce,"
said Don Candido from behind the wine barrels.
"Perhaps we should leave her alone,"
Fiorenza suggested.
"But what about the prayers?"
said Don Candido.
Fiorenza sighed. "Don Candido, you've been
praying at the same time every Sunday for years,"
she pointed out. "I think that the villagers
will remember to show up without the bells!"

In May, the grifflets hatched.
Not long after, Don Candido came
and banged on Fiorenza's door again.
"Fiorenza!" he shouted.
"The griffin is stealing everyone's chickens!"
"I know that," Fiorenza said grimly from where
she was nailing the roof back onto her coop.
"Perhaps you should simply shoot her."

"I can't do that!" Don Candido exclaimed.
"Fiorenza, the griffin talks with angels.
Sometimes I can hear them
while I am attending to the church."
"Well then," said Fiorenza,
"I suppose we must try something else."

So Fiorenza went to the butcher
and fetched a bucket of chicken guts
and a bucket of goat heads.
She walked to the belltower and threw rocks
until the griffin dove out of the window.
Quickly Fiorenza dumped out the buckets
and dove under the wagon.

The griffin pounced on the scraps and devoured them all.
Pleased, Don Candido ordered Fiorenza to feed the griffin
until the grifflets fledged. She grumbled,
but she agreed, because it was certainly better
than losing the rest of her chickens.

In June, Don Candido hammered his fist
against Fiorenza's door yet again.
Fiorenza swung her cauldron of herbs off the fire
and opened the door for the priest.
He was crying.
"Now what has happened?"
Fiorenza asked quietly.

"Someone has shot the griffin,"
said Don Candido.
"Some boys found her dead in a field."
"I am sorry," said Fiorenza,
surprised to find that she was.

"The angels are singing lullabies to the grifflets,"
Don Candido said, "but cannot feed them."
Fiorenza had never heard any angels,
but she had heard his sermons improving,
and so she believed him.
"That is kind of the angels," she said, "and it's too bad
that the grifflets will starve without their mother."

"Is there nothing to be done?"
asked Don Candido, wringing his hands.
"Could we not raise them ourselves,
as falconers do with eyases?"

"Well," said Fiorenza,
"I suppose we could try."

But the grifflets refused to eat,
hissing and flapping their fuzzy wings
as they backed away from human hands,
no matter what food was offered,
though they cried with hunger all the while.

Finally Fiorenza said, "I think
these grifflets are like gulls, whose chicks
will only eat from their parents' beaks."

Then Don Candido stroked his chin and said,
"My young cousin, he often plays Sandrone
in the Commedia dell'arte -- he could make for us
a griffin puppet to fool the grifflets into eating."

"Go and ask your cousin for the puppet,"
said Fiorenza. "I will ask the butcher
for another bucket of chicken guts."

So Don Candido and Fiorenza
climbed up to the belltower
with the puppet and the chicken guts.
They fed the three screaming grifflets,
and got bitten once apiece, and
retreated as soon as the bucket was empty.
Downstairs, they tended each other's wounds,
and changed their clothes, and rinsed the bucket.
Then they tiptoed back upstairs to watch
the grifflets twitch black-tipped, lynxine tails in their sleep
and to listen, awestruck,
to the whispered lullabies of angels.

They shook hands over the nest,
and then they went home for the night.
Fiorenza and Don Candido
might never quite be friends,
but at least they were no longer enemies.

In September, the grifflets flew away
to join the autumn migration to Africa.
That Sunday, Don Candido's sermon
preached about fellowship and forgiveness,
and a smiling Fiorenza --
who had done well in Fermo's market --
dropped a gold ducat on the collection plate.