Stefani was not a scallywag

yet he was considered

a bad man because

he was a bad man

to be reckoned with

 

by those who had come at him

with fists or knives or guns.

Stefani was very opinionated.

He was also quite independent.

 

Stefani, by reputation,

was a fair and honest man in his dealings.

 

His darkly tanned oval face

had a prominent nose,

that stuck out like the blade of an axe

and canted off a little to one side –

a product of one too many brawls.

 

Stefani was a sea bird

whom had rode the winds,

far from the island of his youth.

after being shanghaied at sixteen.

 

He had learned how to fight to survive

when his first pirate master’s ship

had been captured by

a privateer armada.

 

Stephani was offered

a new post or hangman’s rope.

After he’d made his choice

Stefani was assigned

to the hunting,

trapping and gathering

barquentine crew

that combed the islands

for food and trade goods.

 

Better than the pirate life

yet he escaped

as soon as he was able.

 

Thinking he would return to Crete,

instead Stefani ended up

working passage

following an inn room dare,

from a comely wench

of the Queen’s Head in Southwark.

 

Stefani found himself

on his way to the New World.

 

Stefani had wanderlust

far larger

than his broad

muscular six foot-three frame.

 

He did not stay long

in the ramshackle

shanty town along the coast.

 

They missed

his daily supply of wild game.

Stefani did not miss

their stiff puritanical religious ways.

 

He alternately sprint-walked

with long rangy steps along

the tiny meandering animal trail

that crossed

between swampy bits of lowland

which finally emerged into an old forest

full of mossy garlanded oaks.

 

Squirrel barks and bird calls

punctuated a silence

brought to a halt by

the appearance on his south

of the throaty chuckling of

a tiny, swiftly coursing stream.

 

Stefani stopped.

He lifted his battered brown tricorne.

Then ran his fingers

through long black hair

that was starting to gray

at the temples.

 

Soaking in the coolness

of the creek drafts,

he walked forward,

dropped his heavy pack

and squatted

by the sun kissed azure stream,

 

that was thickly choked

with scrub elm and rattling cat tails.

 

Stefani dumped

the warm stale contents

of his deer skin bota

into the pebbled strewn

brown sands and refilled them.

 

Smelling the crisp sweet scent

of black berries

he reached for a nearby clump

and picked it clean.

 

Wiping his hands

on his buckskin leggings,

Stefani next adjusted

his brace of four pistols, long knife,

Catawba war hatchet, long bow and quiver.

 

Hefting his musket,

Stephani surveyed the land

around him

with wary knowing eyes,

after fluidly rising from his hunker.

 

Once more he trotted off

into the unknown west

to find a friend

who had once told him

that the best hunting and trapping

was to be found

in the far mountains

where the big rivers split.

 

Stefani hoped

that he would find

the first big river

before the season changed.

 

There was a trading post there

where he would trade

for a canoe

which would begin the next stage

of his long journey.

 

WTO  12.06.11