I wonder would it comfort you to know,
fair thwarted queen, that I looked through my panes
(when clouds were blowing through the old trees’ hair
and everywhere the scent and sound of rain,
finding my heart warm for a little leaf
that clung so bravely to a dizzy bough,
pushed skyward by an ignorant old vine,
it swung and shivered, wind-whipped, yet somehow
it clung–) and your name came.
Could you have known
how fierce the skies when first you dreamed to climb?
The prism of your love could not redeem
your loves from what they were. Time after time
you wrangled, wept, devised your codes and prayers,
while lives fell red as petals for your cause
about your feet, and England’s haloed crown
caught far off by perhaps unlawful laws
glittered remotely on your cousin’s head.

I cannot say hero or fool, but–friend.
I know the honeyed agony of dreams
disguised as truth until the very end.

Claudia Lehman lives in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, with lots of books, tea, and her favorite man ever. She loves exploring the world of words and teaching children, and she feels most at home in the woods.

Photography by Kenneth Godoy