Belladonna

© 2013 David Jasmin-Green

I had an inkling that I would find you here
at the bottom of the undulating cow pasture
carpeted with magic mushrooms and destroying angels.
I had a gut feeling that I would find your lair,
the place where you sink your thick, gnarled roots
their archetypal yearnings nourished
with many a peasant blood sacrifice
deepening the mildewed loam
beneath the pitted trunks of hawthorn and elder
skirting the waterlogged ditch at the end of the lane.

The solemn bells toll thirteen times
in the crumbling ivied tower
and I'm charmed by their dark chorus;
I know as well as anyone in the village
that your lineage is blemished by
the indelible branding iron,
by the Bar sinister of your forebears' bastardly ways.

Belladonna, beautiful lady,
I hear your mournful cries tangling
the tightening chords of my ephemeral heart
and filling my famished belly
with your inebriating black berries.
Passing beneath a natural arch of twisted branches
I tread the left hand path, the old forest way I walk
with the ancient of days, men of renown.
I hear your discordant whisper
as you dance counter-clockwise
and wind widdershins daisy chains
amongst the branches of the dense thorn coppice.