Fledgling

A garden overgrown with weeds
A stone bench deeply stained
A marble Aphrodite gleams
Her face crumbled by time
Moonlight filters through the clouds
Chasing lost and vagrant shadows

A nocturnal child comes to rest
Disdaining girlhood games
She trills the rarest nursery rhyme
Its lines regarding ogres
And a witch's wicked eye

Night's emissaries comfort her
Telling her that she will grow
Compose lines of grace and shadows
The dark that she will know.