Rally

Gig Ryan

I marry at your feet, but only you can move me

Nu Folk dangles from a deck

My ekphrastic breastplate speaks to the abstruse courtier

Who would think I was one of fourteen?

Your Eleanor, my Isobel, whose slippers in the grate

tarry, but true empathy is kept for this

I make history in the Tower,

fleece the rent to peruse a commentary

time hovels through days’ dreamt tyrant

To choir would sully this grasp

Two Americas checked off, one Ireland picked,

all these wrappings.

Hived in insignia your enchained horse canters

as entreaties whistle up a kingdom

I would push my galleons to charge for you

blowy and stern

And here I decipher some longing, the flowered verse

not sent returns to oak.

But let’s walk, diplomacy can stick it

Pennants beam into air, and all trials you meant and break, twinned princes

not annul but stayed