The Lashing Post

Moonlight casts its numb sheen

Over the burned-down farm.

She skeleton of the barn and house

Stretches somberly over dead grass.

Restless spirits have since moved on

And the deathly silence is now calm.

Here it is where I can think and breathe.

I'm lost in blissful neutrality.

It's reminescent of that tiny space

Between life and death: all is possible.

In this ethereal in-between

Our love is finally reality.

We blossom forth in my mind,

Passionate and tender, unstoppable.

Together we are in love and life.

Forgotten are society's chains.

Oh yes, those chains hold us arrested.

The pale moonlight shines my dull cuffs.

I'm prevented from moving from the earth

As I was from that lashing post.

A hundred and fifty years I've been here,

Since being punished for loving you

My sweet May Belle Smith.

I watched you grow happy and old

And I saw your ascendance to Heaven

While my spirit rots here on the earth.