Blue Ridge Elegy

I was grown,

Not as a flower,

But an Iceni Queen.

Boadicea—

Stripped of power,

Flayed and broken from unripe dream.

You didn’t cry.

You didn’t scream— 

Just collapsed in skin-deep stream, 

A fleck of blood upon your head.

And what can I say,

Darling Jonathan?

I found you dead.

We your friends—

Alexander,

Elijah,

Erin,

Me—

We close our eyes,

But we still see 

Your dark ones there.

Not looking,

No mortal, laughing spark— 

Oh,

Why didn’t you scream?

As you will,

I rose again—

Uncorrupted, 

Of sounder mind,

But never the again the same.

I was twenty,

Plus some change.

You grew my soul—

On Mother’s Day.