Flash Poetry – Last week.

The challenge was to write a poem with the rhyming pattern abba

it had to include any of the following lines

From ‘The Collected Poems of R. S. Thomas –

“Scarcely a street, too few houses.”

and

“I am the farmer, stripped of love.”

then from poet Don Patterson’s ‘Nil Nil.’ –

‘She was two months late.’

and

‘the stars would be squandered on us.’

 

So – this was my entry and the lovely people found it be the winner. Thank you Flash Poetry people.

She was two months late

She was two months late when she came to the castle
Down at the end of the oak bound lane
She told him she was a girl in trouble
And he was the cause of her fear and pain

She begged that he take her and make her honest
A ring on her finger, a home of her own
He said I’m not free to talk of marriage
I’ve a wife right here and a family grown

He gave her a shilling, twas all he would offer
And turned her away with tears of dread
There’s no future here with me my lover
The stars would be squandered on us he said.

She walked all alone to the homeless shelter
Down near the river where no grass grows
Where there’s scarcely a street, too few houses
In dark hidden alleys where no-one goes.

And she knocked on the door and called through the window
Will no-one find me a meal and a bed
All I need is a bowl of gruel
And a safe warm place to lay my head

But the night was cold and charity colder
There in the street in the driving rain
And she thought of the man and the ill he brought her
And vowed it would never be so again

So she raised herself up and she bore a daughter
She taught her to read, to cook and to sew
And then she taught her to fight and to conquer
And other things a warrior should know

And they fought and strove and claimed their fortune
Won their lives and the victor’s crown
And then at last they came to the valley
To the illborn man that had let her down

And he was old and bent and withered
His sight was dim he had aged too soon
And she turned from his gate with a cry of derision
On a wild white stallion, pale as the moon

And now as the clouds scud over the mountains
The cry of the owl freezes blood in men’s veins
And the girl on the stallion and her daughter
Ride the world breaking women’s chains.