‘The Fallen Vestige’ and Other Poetry by Theresa Rodriguez

The Fallen Vestige

The fallen vestige of her foliate time:
Browned leaves beneath; coarse needles of old pine
Once green and pungent; when her nests in spring
With peeping chicks, and swaying boughs, would sing.

So splendors fade, as does the daily light;
Of seed and growth and birth and bloom and height:
Such pastels surely rise to later blend
Into the morose darks of autumn end.

But when to earth her fullness drops like tears,
It thus becomes the soil of future years.

Blessed Margaret Plantagenet Pole (1472-1541)
Executed by Henry VIII 27 May 1541, Tower of London

You ran around the room. The hooded goon
Was chasing with his ax. In tears and cries
You asked him “Why? What have I done?” But soon
He reached your aged neck. But nothing dies
Unless you kill it. Firmly, blood began
To spew from wound, and wound, and wound, and more
Than thirteen whacks and chops and strikes; a man
Against a woman. Then the hacking gore
Took off your head. The deed was done. Such strain
Of royal blood was by a Tudor shed,
Plantagenet and threatening and slain!
Made martyress by him who made you dead.

A coward and a tyrant, in the name
Of bullied blood beatified the same.

Theresa Rodriguez is author of Jesus and Eros: Sonnets, Poems and Songs and is a Classical singer and voice teacher who writes for Classical Singer Magazine.

Featured Image: “Twilight in the Wilderness” by Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900).