The Orphan’s Vigil Beneath the Weeping Sky
A boy of fourteen winters stood alone,
His tattered cloak a sail of sorrow’s strain,
Beneath the sky’s unyielding heart of stone.
The Thames below, in iron currents coiled,
Did whisper secrets through the splintered wood,
While in his palm, a locket weakly soiled
Held faces time had stolen—none withstood.
“Three years I’ve kept thy vow,” he told the storm,
His voice a reed amidst the tempest’s throat,
“To meet when autumn donned her withered form
And speak the truth in one conclusive note.”
The wind replied with tongues of ancient lore,
Of promises that rot like autumn’s core.
Memories bled like ink on parchment sere—
A guardian’s lips, once warm with pledged embrace,
Now food for worms these seven moons and year,
Whose final breath dissolved their fleeting grace.
“Find him,” she gasped, “where waters cleft the earth,
When midnight’s tear dissolves the liar’s vow,
He’ll bear the mark that witnessed thy sad birth
And show what truth the grave disdains to plough.”
Through workhouse grime and alleys choked with fears,
He’d traced faint trails of half-remembered song,
Each tavern tale that dried on drunken ears,
Each phantom clue that proved another wrong.
Till rumor led him to this arch of sighs
Where carriages like specters came and fled,
Their lanterns cutting through the rain’s disguise
To mock the watch he kept beside the dead.
The twelfth bell’s knell dissolved in misted air,
No coachman’s whip cracked night’s oppressive hide,
Just river’s dirge and planks that groaned despair
Beneath his feet, the bridge’s splintered pride.
Then—soft as moth wings brushing tombstone moss—
A shape emerged where fog and shadow wed,
A silhouette that bore Time’s weighty cross,
Its face obscured by hat’s rain-laden brim.
“Art thou the one who pledged beneath yon oak?”
The orphan cried, his hope a fragile blade,
“Who swore to part the veil of secrets’ cloak
When winter’s hand stripped truth of summer’s shade?”
The stranger paused, his gloves of sable hue
Did tighten on a cane of twisted thorn,
“My boy,” he sighed, “what poison did they brew
To make thee chew the cud of hope outworn?”
“Thy guardian spun tales to still thy cries,
No mark mars flesh where no pact burned divine,
The truth thou seek’st in gutter’s refuse lies—
A foundling’s bed, a mother’s last decline.”
The locket shook within the orphan’s grip,
Its rusted hinge a scream in silent bronze,
“Lies! Here’s their smile—each loving fingertip
That cradled me before cruel fate responded!”
The cane struck wood, a thunderclap of scorn,
“These painted ghosts? The playthings of regret!
Thy mother’s name? A jest at death’s new morn,
Thy father’s face? The rain that soaks thee yet.”
From cloak’s black maw, a parchment coffin flew,
“Here’s birth’s cold record—’Infant, sex unknown,
Left wrapped in shame where churchyard yews construe
Their sermons o’er the bones that lie unowned.'”
The river rose in pewter accusation,
The bridge became the ribcage of the world,
Each drop of rain a jeering accusation,
Each timber’s groan a truth too long unfurled.
The stranger’s laugh dissolved in fog’s embrace,
While in the mud, the orphan clutched his proof—
That final line that damned his mortal race:
“Unclaimed, unnamed, beneath December’s roof.”
Dawn’s pallid hand unwove the storm’s dark braid,
Revealing what the night had cloaked in gloom—
A small form curled where shadows pooled like lead,
His cheek pressed to the locket’s metal womb.
The Thames flowed on, a serpent satisfied,
The bridge stood mute, its role in sorrow played,
While in the boy’s cold palm, still open wide,
The rain had washed the ink to nothingness.
