Black Ribbon Rose Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

The dampness was dreadful dreary.
Nightfall was hushed by northern snows,
and the moon shone pale and eerie
on the skin of Black Ribbon Rose.

Her hair was a midnight ocean
threaded high as a creeping vine,
and her lips were sealed devotion
stained with shadows and crimson wine.

She was quiet as a whisper,
rarely gracing the lens of sight;
and the moon may well have lured her
as she only came out at night.

She possessed a timeless aura,
her frail bones drifting through the wood,
a spectral carnivora
cloaked in fur and a velvet hood.

She cast an elegant shadow,
moving with intuitive grace,
with eyes as green as a willow
in the fade of her lovely face.

The stories were all but written,
but no one knew from whence she came.
The neighbors were all but bitten
like the woman they could not name.

For she wanted as they wanted,
all of them searching for the truth;
but nothing seems more unwanted
than a priest in confession booth.

She disappeared around midnight,
planting her echo in the pines.
A raven shrieked in the moonlight
spreading the word across the lines.

She was always a mystery.
Whatever her name, no one knows.
In the closed bloom of history,
she is simply Black Ribbon Rose.