Mourning Melody Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

The night lived in the tendrils of her hair.
Like sea-washed silk, it had a moonlit shine;
and her eyes held a smile within their stare
whose delight was a transport to divine.

Her laughter and lace skirted on the wind
and fluttered on wings of a butterfly
whose gentle birth and unfortunate end
tilted a mirror of tears in the sky.

She bowed her head for the very last time
as the bullet turned her world to ashes
and struck her down while she was in her prime
as she closed the dark wing of her lashes.

The incense of dreams rises through the sky
floating on the brim of diurnal light,
disappears in the distance, lost to the eye,
like an eagle beyond the mountain height.

The quiet earth settles into her bones
forever silent, forever to be -
her fragile wings at the mercy of stones
that left us to mourn over Melody.

I close my eyes and brush the hair of night
until its shadow slips off of the trees
and falls like a dress with threads of starlight
across the cusp of the earth and the seas.