I.
Alone with the stars and the cool night air
Soft through the dark crept a filly so blue,
Wishing for something, for a world that was fair —
Her mood matched her mane, both the same hue.
The grass was silver with star-speckles of dew
Reflecting the night sky, the fruit of her toil;
And the tear on her cheek, well, that glimmered too,
As it fell to the earth to soak into the soil.
II.
But the tear, where it fell, the mark of despair,
Gave rise to something — something quite new.
Up from the ground, as she stopped weeping to stare
Came the tiniest sprout, and she watched as it grew.
The stem sprouted a leaf, which soon became two,
And the filly watched the green sapling uncoil.
It was tall as her knee, as her horn, filling her view,
And the earth with its roots began to bubble and roil.
III.
“What’s happening?” she asked, though no one was there
And that no one would answer, she already knew.
Just her and the tree, a strange mismatched pair —
But she spread her wings anyway, and up they both flew.
The tree was a giant of the forest, beyond all compare
And the filly she watched it with eyes wide and afraid;
“I didn’t know that this was something I could do.”
But there was no answer from the tree she had made.
IV.
And when growth ceased ‘neath the moon’s silvery glare
The filly rested in the boughs of the forest’s denizen most new.
“I wish I had friends,” she said, and in her voice pain was laid bare,
"That they’d love me as well as Tia, even if it was only a few.”
The tree gave no response; it possessed no point of view,
And the filly’s face fell as her hopes of companionship were betrayed.
“Maybe,” she snarled, “They’ll love me if I stage a coup.
If Tia was gone…then I’d have to be obeyed.”
V.
But then she shook her head; “No, I suppose I don’t dare;
She’s far stronger than me, I know that much is true.
And I love her, I guess — I suppose I do care
But I still sometimes wish I wore the golden horseshoe.”
The wind whispered through the branches, as though to say, You?
And the princess snarled: “I could be Queen, it could be fated!”
With a flash of light she was gone, and the tree couldn’t pursue
And it was alone as she had been, before it was created.
VI.
Years passed, centuries passed, and yet still it stood there;
Weathered and bent, but still the great yewtree grew.
A new shadow was on the moon — if it was fair or unfair
The tree did not know, and it could not construe.
The mare in the moon did not move, did not stew
On the injustices done her by the sister she hated.
But the tree, if trees could, might have wondered if too
She would regret it as much as the sister who waited.
VII.
And after a millenium had passed, again came the melancholy mare
And in her mane starlight shone, galaxies born anew.
As she walked to the tree unseen wind stirred her hair
And as she reached its side, her friend old and true —
— Her horn glowed, the moon rose, and she watched it through
The leaves and the branches of the tree she had cried
And she thought of her sister fighting alone to be the glue
Keeping their kingdom whole after she had all but died.
“She waited like you did,” said the mare to the yew
Which stood tactiturn and sentinel, a silent old guide.
“I asked her how she did it, and she said she just knew
That I’d come home and rule again at her side.
If I were patient like her, like a tree, perhaps I’d have seen
That it’s better to be two princesses than just a single queen.”