Past Times

Past Times

Ruby flames devour and burn
the manor house – it lights for miles
this wooded hill but still
she hears the screams and mortal pleas
of those die, that used to tease
and keep her from her midnight sleep
and steal away her daddy’s smiles
until his face would fall and turn…

It wasn’t her - it couldn’t be
a little girl who tossed the match
upon a bale of kerosene-
soaked hay and hammered shut
the doors and windows but
allowed her daddy one last sight
of mother’s smiles in firelight

For now the monsters all are dead
and left but shadows in her head
and pain within her spirit’s hall
for pie for one is pie for all
and into her they all had hid
and whisper now of what they did
so Lucy, grown into a wife
sharpens well the carving knife.