Ploughman’s Chains Poem by Doug Stewart

They call him a singer, a poet with a 6 string, a disguise, but that just hides a story.
He sings about love and he sings about hate, of the tides comin’ in
and the crops bein’ late, but mostly he sings of his lost Camellia Anne.

Camellia Anne, the Queen of the May, the flaxen haired, winsome lass,
Gone too soon, gone away. Rumors in the street say she slipped on the pier,
others that she drowned for love or vengeance, but some believe she’s in these hills
Still. Truth hides in minor keys, in couplets and refrains. Unnamed memories of despair.

He saw her at the water’s edge, looking past the present into a dark place of
abandoned dreams. He watched. She raised her dancer’s arms into a diver’s pose,
vaulting into the dark deep, swimming all the way to oblivion. His scream a near whisper. No.

Now sometimes, when the night is blasted silent, and the moon is masked by a spectral fog,
he hears her voice riding the north wind, singing her songs only to him.
Her ploughman lover, her companion, her victim.