Lady Warrior

Welsh eyes of blue flame

Mock the pain of tortured night--

Heart takes flight toward her game

And I am slain by gracious might.

The moon shines blue in gloaming woods

On darkling roads through shadowed time--

Along these lines she travels, broods:

Mood floods through like sleeping wine.

She rides her steed without a care

Fiery hair in streams and tides

Hides in its flow, in wind and air,

Eyes there, that bluely shine.

Full fierce and swift she spurs her steed

Toward a deed 'cross darkening rifts,

And she begins a shift through woods ill-treed

As without lead her journey shifts.

The moon by night regards her pace,

The darkening race, ranting past sight,

As with spirit's might her lightening face

Seeks the place of ethereal light.

 Her goal's far-flung, and close as her breast,

And her westward track 'neath skies jewel-hung

Is her hunger, though even she has not yet guessed

That the best is the travel through vales time-sprung

And getting there is a barren nothing

When with riding splendor compared,

And dared she think think of that dreaded thing

Her exultant winging would be impaired.

For her goal, achieved, will end her flight,

And the night-ridden tracks through murky soul,

Burning coals as they are, with wan Faerie light

Would snap tight at the approach of her final goal.

And as she breathes only for the chase

And faces the night for the life it leaves,

Her heart grieves to end her maddening pace

And her taste of a thousand fruited believes.

So the end of her run is the end of her

As sure as speed is her only friend

She cannot bend to more mundane deeds

But needs, or dies, to speedly wend.

May 31, 1994