George Moore

Royals

If I could live in any era it would be in the wings of the castles 

or on the parapet where evening sings of the loneliness on the moors

But really more I would live in the time of the Royals 

when great grandfather’s portrait glared down from the high stone wall

on the maids who flit by like startled birds and rush to dust the leathery tomes

of the almost always empty library

I would be content to be a peasant storming the great gates 

and demanding the immediately release of some lost waif mistakenly

taken in or I would even be a footman a butler or some other ghost 

so much like mice that scurry beneath the moonlight on the painted ceiling

where heaven was always fading to an ethereal blue 

And there mother sits with her cloth-bound book and father remembering the wars

and how he returned being someone else to this lost son some wayward boy

and together we walk the great lawns admiring that decaying world

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George Moore has published poetry in The Atlantic, Poetry, Colorado Review, Orbis, Stand, Dublin Quarterly, Arc and Orion. Recently collections include Children’s Drawings of the Universe (Salmon Poetry) and Saint Agnes Outside the Walls (FutureCycle). He’s been a finalist for The National Poetry Series, nine Pushcart Prizes, the Bailieborough Poetry Prize, the Gregory O’Donoghue and Gingko Poetry Prizes, and for the Best of the Net and Best of the Web. He taught literature and writing with the University of Colorado, and now lives on the south shore of Nova Scotia.