Fairy Tale
Princess Moonzumi and Prince Heart-of-Ash
were betrothed as children through a looking glass.
She never knew him. He never saw her,
just a shadow that moved in the mirror's blur.
Prince Heart-of-Ash learned bard song and sword,
to jest with a blade and kill with a word.
Princess Moonzumi went out every day
to dance with the Sidhe where the dogwoggles play
down in the mud, up in the scud,
around the green tree that sheds no blood.
She knew every fae in the wild dark wood
and they taught her to fear the evil in good.
Princess Moonzumi and Prince Heart-of-Ash
were married in autumn when the east winds thrash
as the leaves fell like fire on earth's mirror-face,
and they loved each other for a year and a day.
Then Prince Heart-of-Ash took his sharp bright blade
down to the wood where the dogwoggles played.
The princess died like a mouse in the leaves
for a lie in the heart only ash could believe.
September 2022
posted for earthweal's
and
dVerse Poets'
Sidhe/SHē/noun, plural noun: Sidhe: the fairy people of Irish folklore, said to live beneath the hills and often identified as the remnant of the ancient Tuatha Dé Danann.
Note: I wrote the seed of this poem while running a fever a few weeks ago, but the prompts shaped it to final form. Apologies if I have stretched the boundaries a bit on what was requested.
Images: Mammal in Leaves, author unknown, courtesy of earthweal Fair Use
They went hand in hand in the country that smells of appleblossoms and honey, © Arthur Rackham, Irish Fairy Tales
Fair Use
