Pocahontas Exotic Flower

[Frank E Gibbard]

(from bits of known facts and much speculation)

 

Pocahontas was at home a verdant North American flower,

Transplanted, groomed to world exotic by romantic power,

Fame by word unbidden came like most history, unknowing;

Back then blind fate would cultivate a famous blooming hour.

A bed of anonymity would by and by be fertilely o'erplanted

As legend or fiction has it, by one girlish and daughterly yen.

 

Captain Smith, a stranger and interloper from far-off lands

A would-be invader got raided, yoked by hostile native bands

Stood near death mortally threatened and expecting no relief

Only the coup de tomahawk from a bona fide Red Indian Chief.

 

Just in time and just in heart (it's said) Pocahontas interceded

For the colonial's continued existence so passionately she pleaded

This bold attempt succeeded, her father complied, he'd liberate.

The former captive freed indeed Powhatan even let to integrate.

 

Later as white and redman mixed she duly met post-Smith another

A certain colonial called John Rolfe became her one true English lover,

Home-bred women being a mite unplentiful in Rolfe's abode Jamestown

Vicious tongues may whisper: "squaw" but he would not turn a gifted horse down.

 

From her people on a miasma-sea of history floated this "princess" Pocahontas,

Like a loose feather plucked proud from her native head-dress band.

She sailed away to old England to a new foreboding "civilised" land.

Under the crown of the great white father, King James, supplanting her's.

 

For good or ill as she decided by her strong and female will

A dutiful wife she'd go with this relatively strange husband.

Pocahontas would perish soon in a bleak cold and alien Britain

But would persevere in story faction as is still so often written;

To the present day the modern scribes will colourfully recount her

Most well known escapades and each imagined best encounters.

 

A statue of her stands today in a town ironically called Gravesend,

Whereabouts this apparent unsavage lady maybe was buried at her fateful story's end.

[JoelJosol]

Now, I got educated about Pocahontas :-) Is this poem's structure a type of poem in its 6-4-4-4-4-6-2 or just random?

[tonyv]

I like the metaphor you chose for Pocahontas, Frank. And I didn't realize she traveled so far and wide. A good history lesson.

 

Tony