Queen Ann and Kindred

Her eyes, half shut lures wanderers and poets, for they know

How soon the green of summer’s queen must don a shroud of snow

Her beckoning the reckoning where thought and hunger spar

As Duty vexes Dreamer with The Very Things That Are

The lover of Her stutters; satisfies the lack of words

With Sight and Touch; Her flower mothers broods of bloom and birds

As sky divides the night and day; poets pause, then adjust

Their points of pen accordingly because they know they must

The berried vine cleaves where the leaf of it withers and dies

And all The Things people pursue imitate its demise

Where now Her eyes half-shut suggest the imminence of sleep

Her gown scatters in tatters only Mother Earth can keep

© Janet Martin