Deep in the north she stand tall, with a smirk on her lips.
Short her stature but still she stand tall and smiling amongst the ashes.
Standing short is easy, not the tall that too with courage.
In the halls, she had danced with needle as her father watched.
She had seen the pigeons fly as the executioner’s sword pinked
With the blood of their father, and heard her sister screaming.
She was naive; lost kid in the wood not knowing where to go.
She was a boy; list of names in her mind, in her dreams
Dreaming to put the Needle into the hearts who hurt her house.
She had came close to deaths more than once; more than anyone else.
She had seen the Young Wolf riding dead on the horse.
Leaving her protector to die, she had been dead for a long time.
Serving the god of the death, serving the man without a face;
Roaming the city of free men as hawker selling oysters;
Surviving the city as the beggar, blind and aimless, asking for alms.
She had smiled at the play, and she cried at the play saving her target.
Without face the travel she had taken long ago, with face she’s at home.
He had gifted him the dagger that he had hold on his father throat;
He passed it onto her just casually as the reunion gift
But, purpose deep buried in; a wry and dry smile he had.
She is the protector; as she slit the throat of the little finger.
Standing beside her sister she stands tall as the blood spilled out
On the floor of the hall-court;
She became the elder not her Lady sister that moment.
She was a kid; runnin’ and sneakin’ to catch on the march
Of the King of the seven realms with his legitimate family.
She is a lady; as the dragons flew over her home
And their Mother and their Brother marched in.
She is a lover; the night was long; all the warriors and knights sitting
Around the fire in the hall, and meditating in the squire’s song,
She need to be loved, and was loved by the Bull, son of King
Echoing his father’s wish to her father on his last visit to her home.
The army marched into her home; she faced the death again.
She fought; she bleed; she fight in with the warriors
Killing more than a few.
Red Priestess’ prophecy comes to be true before the long night conclude.
She was a wind; as she passed on the guards to reach the King.
She is a tall woman; dipping the dagger as the King hold her to kill.
Deep in the North, Arya Stark stand tall,
Though she’s still small Lady Stark;
Smiling at her brother who seems to knew of this conclusion b’fore.
The army shattered and turned to ashes; leaving the death to be death.
The warriors and knights relieved; sun rises at the horizon of Winterfell.
Arya Stark stand tall deep in the North under the weirwood tree.
Written for National/Global Poem Writing Month Day 29
Prompt:
And now for our penultimate (optional) prompt! The poet William Wordsworth once said that “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” For Wordsworth, a poem was the calm after the storm – an opportunity to remember and summon up emotion, but at a time and place that allowed the poet to calmly review, direct and control those feelings. A somewhat similar concept is expressed through the tradition of philosophically-inclined poems explicitly labeled as “meditations,” – like Robert Hass’s “Meditation at Lagunitas,” the charming Frank O’Hara prose poem, “Meditations in an Emergency,” or Charles Baudelaire’s “Meditation.”
Today, I’d like to challenge you to blend these concepts into your own work, by producing a poem that meditates, from a position of tranquility, on an emotion you have felt powerfully. You might try including a dramatic, declarative statement, like Hass’s “All the new thinking is about loss,” or O’Hara’s “It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.” Or, like, Baudelaire, you might try addressing your feeling directly, as if it were a person you could talk to.
