English, French & Scot

From your birth I adored you in

the Glens, as far as my eye could see, white

towered in France,

you and me young in the English grass,

a bond of medieval jewellery exchanged.

Independent Brave, fighting,

high-caused, brilliant, beloved, bound as you were also

to your mother heart and your father's grave

legacy.

I heard you, - as if I were a bird - as you fell,

black curls, your fighting arm in tatters, but I

was bound and gagged with white silk

and flatterers. Mute.

Long, the screech of you echoed through time,

to a little girl's dream,

louder it rolled and echoed -

until it was a cackling witch-lady, black, and

fell into an address of Scott's works.

I realised you had Gone. You were gone, -

my heart, my soul, my medieval jewel, - eclipsed by white.

My spirit mourned - I was betrothed to another,

distaste I was made to hide.

My soul was dragged - a leather satchel

into the muddied pools of the fields of war.

Catapulted back, a shot from a sling, I journeyed

through the black, where time had stood still, and waved

finer hands over the field where your spirit lay slain, inert, cause lost.

I was black as night with charcoal eyes -

an eagle's crest on my brow -

I called, and screeched as you did, against the

stone-hard queen, and won your favour

rightly, and knightly - your soul was freed

from its dark, agonised void.

And what can I say

to you now,

but breathe?

copyright Monika Roleff 2005.