NURSERY CRIME

This is an ode to the childhood rhyme
On the demise befell by Mary.
Mary, a girl so contrary
That wouldn’t leave her garden alone.
On bleak cold days
She’s commonly seen
Within sight of the Piper’s stone.

For not a soul knows why
When the cockle shells cry
And the silver bells sigh
Sad ‘n’ low,
The birdsong stills
As her teardrops spill,
Stifled screams chill the flow

Of rivulets red
As they seep and spread
Across the blanket gleam of the snow.
And those pretty maids weep
Bow their heads in grief
To recall horror
In what they know

Of when Tom,
The impetuous Piper’s son
Stole a kiss in a quickening breath
But acted grimly ‘pon that wilful Mary
Recoiling from his searing bliss.
That Piper’s boy let the secateurs swing
As he cut her throat murderously

And away did run from those frozen lips
Through the trailing red, guiltily.
In a desperate escape bid over the pond rink
Of treacherous woe,
His foothold slipped
As he breached the brink
Of the freezing ruddy snow.

Down he came on the reddened blades;
The secateurs driven to his heart.
His body sank through the broken crust
The icy doom within sealed hard.
So thereby goes Mary,
Forever contrary,
Who can't leave her garden alone

Feels the need to rend weeds
And release the blooms
From a debilitating stranglehold.
And to her precious bells, many cockle shells
And pretty maids left in the snow,
She'll weep for them freezing floods of tears
Keeping Tom Piper entombed in the cold.

©KizWiz
February 2012