Gabrielle's Song,10,001 A.D.A.* Poem by Gabrielle Ciarann Roniyah Baer

I hear the cries of 'No! ' 'Go back! '
A bard always listens to her audience.
So, I'm here, again, to ask
How far back along my many paths
shall I retrace my steps?

Shall I be what I never was
a 'girl my parents wanted'?
They're gone, and I can only wish,
gone to Elysium, past any help from me.

Shall I be a foolhardy, foolish woman-child
risking much while looking for 'adventure',
full of daring, full of tales?
I liked her too, but never will see
the world again as simply as did she.

Or suppose,
if walking the past alive again was possible
I could be Queen Melosa's heir?
With Ephiny's staff, and Teireis' marks of caste
an Amazon heiress, who hadn't taken lives?
Who swore she'd never, ever kill?
Blood-innocent I stayed for months past then,
walking the wild and bitter world at a warrior's side.
But such never, ever was meant to last,
that's clear now, much too clear.

And there the nightmare truly starts-
My heart's friend died, and gods-thanked lived again,
Melosa's crown I wore, numbly, briefly, and joyously
removed,
My soul's love lived, but plunged us onto her older path-

No! She made her choices and I made mine,
And gods! If I could take some back, wouldn't I?
Wouldn't I!

Ask yourselves that question
who come seeking my answers
you see acceptance now in my eyes?
You hear it in my voice?
It is of this plain fact:
I made my choices
good and ill, angry and glad, generous and jealous,
sometimes simply wrong, and
sometimes very, very right.
But if anything is 'fated' in
this wide, wild, and dangerous world;
it is our choices freely made.
No one and nothing can undo them.

So I ask you, dearest listeners
if I've not sent you sound asleep
If you had the heart's core choice
of your life to make again
the choice to love, the choice to stay,
the choice to stay and love,
the one you defied men and gods,
immortals and angels,
queens and demons,
and all your world to make-
would you name it grief or pride? would you say it's folly?
would you call it Fate? would you name it failure?
would you shrug it off patiently to hear it named
'acceptance'?

I hear talk that bards are welcomed,
even honored here.
I hear tell some seek to tell those tales
I failed to scribe-
That's well, but know this:
We are a cranky, quick-tempered lot, we bards.
Who take it ill, to find our own scrolls writ-over.
So name not surrender what we call oaths kept,
Write not folly, where we wrote tragedy,
Mark not mere acceptance
what we know as the heart's core: love.

In other words:
Don't seek to meddle in the affairs of
fighting, scribing, smiling, sorrowing,
grimacing, daring, laughing, patient, raging,
Amazon-Queen-Bards,
for we are greatly gifted, and
have long memories.

*A.D.A. after the discovery of agriculture


(written in 2002)