The Forever Life of Edgar Allan Poe

Around the time that he was born
the steamboat arrived at the Boston shore.
Many saw in it both promise and hope,
something far beyond this poor boy’s scope,
for his life was foretold by the dark harbor waves,
his innocence robbed by abandonment and pain.

In Richmond was the orphaned child left behind.
For adoption into a merchant’s life, not his kind.
Soon he was sent across the ocean sea,
to England and Scotland for a new life to be.

As he roamed across the isle of Anglia,
he heard the call of his Uncle Sam.
Time passed, a half dozen years
before he drifted back to his home again.

Although he found shelter in many a place,
only one did he truly embrace.
Baltimore was his real destiny,
finding refuge in an attic on North Amity.
With a secure tin roof now over his head,
he labored over a drink, a quill and a pad.

No writer’s path was ever simple or easy,
acclaim is scant, the stomach hollow and queasy.
He wandered and searched up and down
for any writing job to be found
using the only talent with which he was born
to make himself a name and heal a life that was torn.

Propelled by hunger and imagination uncanny,
one masterful tale he contrived among many.
With a sorcerer’s hand lent by a dark magician,
he revealed to the world his talking raven vision.
His pen he used to carve an eternal name.
His words have brought him forever fame.

Then came a fateful election day,
outside a polling place our Edgar lay
in the gutter of a pub, dazed and delirious,
but that wasn’t the only thing amiss and mysterious
for he wasn’t garmented in his own decent clothes
and had vanished for days without any good cause.

His death was unexplained, his sickbed words curious
mimicking the dark plots in his own bizarre verses.
As Baltimore’s son he would be solemnly carried
to Westminster churchyard, where he was finally buried.

By heaven’s tears his death was mourned,
his headstone destroyed by a deluge that poured
Sadly, his quill ceased to wander and explore
and his weary bones would travel nevermore.

There in solitude he quietly lay
for a hundred years, when on his birthday.
The city was stirred by a shocking rumor
of a shadowy visitor with a dark sense of humor.

Of a sudden, Poe’s name was resurrected
in a manner quite eerie and most unexpected.
But perhaps not....
After all, we’re talking about Edgar Allan
to whose own spooky words
his fate could have befallen.

The talk around town was of a yearly vigil kept
by a man no one saw or could ever intercept.
Those who on his gravesite staunchly made their bed,
still failed to catch the culprit in the act.
In spite of all efforts, they found the next dawn instead
a half-filled cognac glass left to toast the dead.

Like a ghost, the stranger came and went;
impervious to the power of sight,
witnessed solely by the cold, unseeing eyes
of a frosty, magical winter’s night.

Sixty years left he his trademarks for the occasion
before ceasing his task, to his pursuers’ confusion.
One such message he artfully left,
Puzzling to the living but meaningful to the dead:
three live roses, crimson red.
Three in eternal unity against the emptied sands of time
torn from the earth to salute the sublime.

Perfuming the air like a sin-scented candle,
was a bottle of Martell (not Amontillado).
The reason for the ritual may never be known.
The secret is interred now with two men’s buried bones.

The mystery fellow’s name, though never revealed,
his task for his idol he has wittily fulfilled.
Who would allow such a grand soul to be forgotten
another bright star who perished, his name soon unspoken?
Never, exclaimed the graveyard’s secret observer;
Never, cried the winged creature he raised to be immortal.

Now the faithful raven is his timeless friend,
Poe’s presence on the Earth shall never end.
Instead of one, his midnight creation has grown
into a multitude with a mission to carry on.
Each night and day they gather in a flock
in the forsaken field facing his North Amity block.
Pacing and brooding, watching and croaking,
to their master’s soul, they never cease talking.

Never letting go the memory of that fretful night,
Never forgetting to whom their fame should belong.
They flap their wings and strike up a song.
“Nevermore,” they chant in one voice, eerily strong.