The Stolen Wild

One hundred years and eleven are gone since
you sent the letter
Across time and unfathomable distance
To me.
Had I known better
I never would have come
For here I find a queue, a fence,
dissonance,
No more do faeries hum
To slumbering trout, or dance til break of day.

Come away, o come away.

No more is the gentle quietude
Of which you fondly spoke,
Nor the peaceful solitude
To coax the rhythmic stroke
Of ink.
O my heart how she did sink
When instead of flapping herons I found
Concrete.
Digital frames, persistent clicks, and the clang of machinery.
Your words
Dearest friend
Are long since obsolete.

Come away, o come away.

You could not have known then what your pen would wreak
In the forthcoming times,
How it would lay bare what was beloved,
sacred,
Til men came and cultivated
The waters and the wild
Of those idyllic rhymes.

Come away, o come away.