A Brief Candle: A Tribute to Mr. Ihnat

A Brief Candle For MR. Ihnat
    @2013 Linda Barrett

     The Sound of your name
     ignited memories about you
     Bing and Google stories
     said your family brought
     you over from Czechslovakia
     just days before Hitler's Nazis
     goose stepped into your homeland
     You lived on a Lynden, Ontario farm
     found your true love at fourteen,
     the theater
     Acting took you off the farm
     and into the U.S. Army
     in the Korean War
     Your Poem,
     "Toil in The Night
     won you a second prize award
     Leaving the army,
     You won bit parts
     in drag strip B-movies
     with your friend, Gary Clarke
     Gradually, your actor's inner flame
     transformed those one-dimensional
     guest shots
     into fully-fleshed characters
     Your persona glowed from
     the cathode tube
     portrayed villians
     in shows from "Honey West"
     to "Bonanza"
     Your incandescent flame enticed us
     enough to like them.
     In an "Outer Limits" two part episode,
     you inherited a sympathetic role,
     forcing Robert Duvall to stand back
     from your presence.
     As the deranged Lord Garth,
     you made William Shatner's 
     melodramatically macho Captain Kirk
     mild before your bombastic insanity.
     After that,
     you matched wits
     with the Mission Impossible team
     using your Cold War calculating
     Stefan Miklos mind
     By 1970,
     every network show
     demanded you as a guest star
     but directing was your second love.
     While you tried selling
     your Rodeo movie melodrama
     at the Cannes Film Festival,
     Death came with a heart attack
     to snuff out
your life's brief candle