The Queen’s Garden

Snaking over hills,

winding through rivers.

Her hands are the things that deliver.

Death. Life. Reproach of all the emotions laid within.

She plucks on my heartstrings, making me sing with a grin.

Swallowed pride, mouth open wide, I can gaze at her whip.

The one she cracks smooth, the one with my neck at its tip.

When the jaw pried open, gaping hole and wide.

Staring down the dark hollowed center where I'd be buried inside.

Had my wits been so quick, had I not been as sharp.

I'd be swallowed deep within, another of her children's throats.

Still I wander, far and wide, with my foot pressing wide

Flat blades of green under toe.

Until I travel through her wintery snow,

Ever captured, ever lost in her wintery frost.

Lived another sweltered moon,

cold and white, dusted in blue,

To a warm Spring and Summer where life begins anew.

Nature please, love me so, but be more gentle when you come and go.

I am frail, I am weak when I feel I've lost my peak.

I am human, I need much, but I fear to partake in the hunt that you revel,

The one you force us all to indulge fate.

Where the strong live on satiated and the weak are a plenty.

More of food, more to eat, but I am not as meek.

I am human, and I wall off your creativity so to eat,

in my warm hovel home on the now leveled slope.

No more bears, no more lions. Just my old trusty rifle.

Soup in hand, spoon to mouth, no more hard winter travels.

Nature speaks and she keeps knocking on my porch,

breath so shallow.

Waiting here, peaking there in my frosting up windows.

She can have me when I'm old, she can have me when I'm ill,

but I will not partake in her hunting games to give her a thrill.