• Week 10 • Ode •

Ode to Coming Home

If it is that I’m blessed
to ride and bear leader’s crest,
then so be it, gilt wings I’ll wear
and home, my heart, will me be near.

To incite a god-arousing war,
the likes of which seen once before,
we ruin kingdoms and mouth for blood
through shrieks of fated felled in mud.

I am still. I will not fear my death.
I tread with pride and steadied breath
to face that fate as legionnaire,
I raise my bow and fortune bear,

though a bitter tale blows from the heights,
hoary as hell and, scathing, alights;
cold as traitors swung from gallows,
enough to make the heart chill, chaste and sallow.

And yet, riding those winds down from the range
is apple blossom, sweet and strange,
from ancient trees with feet in loam
along the road that leads me home

But ’til my last fight home must hold,
while the war-heart’s wings unfold
between the screaming and the choir.
In company, alone, I traipse a darker shire.