Death.
A sounding-word.
A word which plain speaks of what it is.
Death.
_______________________________
Master Merry
pledged his sword to Theoden-King.
Master Took,
to the mad Steward of Gondor.
Blood flowed thereafter,
and a night was made but more terrible
by fire.
That was but the almost-ending.
_______________________________
Death there was
from the start,
the ice of its breath
in the fog-shrouds of Crickhollow.....
and the pocket-dark of Bree.
Death and worse-than
upon once-fair Weathertop.
Death within the ruined halls of Moria.
Black-feathered death beside the noble river
of storied Kings.
_____________________________________
A......plentiment of Death there was:
a reaping of trolls and men,
orcs and elves,
dwarves and hobbits.
Torn bodies lie,
embraced,
enemy-to-enemy
before cloven gates,
severed limbs a-rot in marshes.
The Great River's fish
feed upon gape-mouth'd corpses .......
______________________________
Death there was
of yet another sort.
Ever it was beside me upon the Road.
I saw it in scars,
wound like map-lines
upon the back of a once-hobbit,
tasted it in the slime of foul water,
smelled it in the noisome air.....
knew it in the quieting of my Master's heart.
At the last,
but one hobbit surrendered his life
on that day of fire.
Yet death took note:
there was yet one as needed.....
harvesting.
No tender gardener, death,
but rather that which plucks blossom
and root
and stalk withal
before it is time.
__________________________________
He is gone now, my Master.
Gone long ago
across the great and Sundering Sea.
Death has taken his cousins.
And my Rosie.
___________________________________
A ship stays in grey-clouded harbour,
far horizon burnt with the sunset.
Elanor bids me farewell.
At last
I may follow this promised
Road.
To whatever end.
To whatever.....
beginning.
_______________________________________
© March 2016 Janet Nelson-Alvarez
Destruction of Mount Doom by John Cockshaw ©
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