The Ploughman's Lament
You brought me, cradled in your unscarred palms,
A knife-hilt — bronze, and etched by green-hued time —
That our careless plough had disinterred
In fields above the bull-rush rippled bank.
“Look what I found, Daddy; where’s it from?”
I turned the hilt in morning’s angled light
And dimly read oblivion engraved
In faded curves. A profile? Unknown script?
Or just the legacy of cracking time?
“Honey, I don't know. It's very old.”
Across the stream, as willows stirred the mist,
I almost glimpsed a figure, empty armed:
A faithful soldier, who once held this ford
In mortal service to now-nameless lords;
Or husband keeping pillagers at bay
Just long enough, as all the homestead fled;
Til blade and blood slipped from their slackened grip
To lie, last remnant of forgotten lives.
“Daddy; you’re hurting me!” You pulled away,
Protesting, from my sudden, fierce embrace;
Back to your laughing treasure hunt among
The white anemone and new-turned soil,
A bit of bronze discarded in my fist.
For how can bright youth understand my tears?
A hundred years and your beloved smiles
Will be but memory; a hundred more,
Until the whispering wind and mumbling stream
And light itself no longer know your name,
Nor mine. I laid the dagger back to rest;
I stood, renewed my grip upon the plow,
And pushed it forward, into fleeting day.
(c) 2015 by Rastellion of Laurelin
