In the Next Life, Canto III, stanzas 315-319

And then she thought to ask the six four K:
“Sir, what are your intentions, if you please?”
All right, so what exactly did she say?
I wouldn’t know; I don’t speak Insidese.

“I’d like to take this rascal for a jaunt
while I become a super-hominid,
and then my spirit will return to haunt
those who would kill me, and who nearly did.”

He sounded less like Heaven’s messenger
and more like one who might have upward passed,
yet Ciral somehow still excited her.
No wonder, is it? She’d but to contrast.

By this time they were at the highway’s edge,
and Esther had to laugh at Ciral’s eyes,
for not unlike a baby bird in fledge,
he exercised new limbs with some surprise.

“Be quiet, girl; I need to concentrate.”
He couldn’t take the ridicule in stride.
She knew a weakness now, at any rate.
With prudence, she could prey upon his pride.

6 4 K: The $64,000 Question was an early television quiz show whose title came to mean the most important of a series of questions.

©2011 Louis A. Merrimac