Forever flows her cooling currents

Beneath a too familiar fog

The song of Shenandoah

Still rises to the morning sun

Past naked limbs still shivering

From November’s heavy dew

The witch’s sabbath come and gone

And saints quit trembling as they pray.

Off Massanuttan’s barren cliffs

And o’er its somber face

On pinions of an eagle’s wing

The light’s soon beaten into shards

And down and down in shadows fall

To dance among the leafy troupe

With nervless hands they form a ring

And swirl up to the sparrows

Chattering rumored empty catylists,

They miss the passing evidence of

Broken arrow heads and musket balls

Half buried in their graves.

I once rode on Shenandoah

Hips that bucked me while I plunged

She was naked on that April afternoon

When she seduced me into play

On the sabbath, holy words were

Long forgotton, in her remembered pools

Until blood trickled on her currents

Purging all the innocence just lost.

Spare me from the hornet’s drone

From the strike of copperheads

From the drowning quarry’s blue

Still tinging lips whose brag runs hollow.

I crawled beneath her battle fields

I ignored her warning fence

My bottom bureau drawer yields

Stolen proof as evidence.

I still hear her siren song

Shenandoah haunts just like a ghost

When kisses once left me satisfied

Her tongue’s what I miss most.

Ravens circle overhead 

Warning of the risk to tell

The things that happened in her bed

The danger’s known too well.

Couples never rhyme for long

‘Tis well to last one season

Such mating echoes fill their song

Now sung for different reason.