The Ring of the Raven
By Bram Bone
Drawn upon the quite hearth,
Unlit by fire’s gloom and broken by the stark non-light born.
There I sat in blanketed bare of common warmth;
No song, no cheer, no quote.
Simply alone in the dark, drenched in thoughts untold.
By night’s half end I stayed,
Wallowing in inky pain, over yet another page wrought
Blankly in my brain.
I was a writer once, bold in italic prose.
Well-spoken by my peers and foes.
Yet a year ago I lost it,
The spark, the feel, the love of it.
Over scribbles over ink-blots stained in parchment torn and woes.
Nay I could write no more.
For my fire, like my hearth hath grown cold.
All because of the loss of Belladonna Rose.
She I loved once when I was a younger man.
She, once a dream alive, now hollowed under stone.
For an illness took her mid-winter last November rain.
And I never saw her ‘gain.
T’was on this dreary night wrapped in piteous quiet and lows.
That I heard a simple tapping, rapping faintly on the windows.
“Be gone fowl ticking, ghastly tipping on my mind. Be gone and ne’er return! May hell you shall find!”
Yet the tapping resounded upon my window stilled.
I looked and saw nothing, but the black and ender wood.
I stood, kicking bottle and bottle after bottle.
With its contents dumped in my wells of sorrow, gullet barrow past yellow teeth.
“Who be it at my window, and at this time of night?”
I limped myself for yonder and tripped my way to the sill.
Still the tapping sounded, and it bounded through my
Piercing skull and band.
I saw nothing, but only heard.
“Belladonna.”
The tapping went.
I could hear it spake the name.
“Have you returned to me? Have you grieved for me? Are you home?”
Still tapping hit, my lip I bit in constant worry blown.
“Fire, fire I must have! Perhaps I’ll see you there!”
Quickly I stumbled, and I fumbled all around the bottles, drenched in cold sweat a blown.
She was there, she returned, her love for me unblown!
I found myself the tinderbox, threw what kindling I had to the hearth.
I lit a dimming fire, and in the light it shown.
I looked to the window, but my lost one I did not see.
T’was only a raven, hitting only for me.
“Blasted fiend!”
I threw a bottle at the window, smashing it nearly whole.
The raven flew, and left me alone.
There I felt, I moaned.
There I wept, and there I slept in dreams cast far from home.
When I woke, bestirred by cold and damp.
My head pounding, my limbs scant.
I saw my broken window, and on a shattered shard I noticed something shining
Something lining in the sunlight.
I stood and came to it, inspecting it alone.
It was a ring, a ring of gold.
T’was her ring, her ring far ‘lone.
She sent it back to me.
T’was then she left me at last.
Parting by a raven’s wing.
In the pale of dawn.
In the break of day.
Her last goodbye, and perhaps also mine.
Begging me on my way.
My cross, though here to stay.
And so I sat down once more to write.
Author Notes: Yes, of course its inspired by The Raven by Poe. No ideas are really unique, simply folded different ways.
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