Chain and Mail

On the southern corner of the lawn,
where the sundial action of the mountain initiates,
sits a bush squat and proud, a bush of barb
which stabs front and back if imprudently approached.

The bush is pissed. Who knows who or what
may have slighted him. Color iron his leaf
who wears a coat of chain and mail,
and decorates the season berry.

His head is tipped with bayonets,
and faithful every morning a bird perches on the helmet's crest,
and feasts on the half lid sun of mid December.
Think birds fragile?

Fragile like them we should be,
who keep their summer coats through wind freeze.
Now as to this narrator in your read, liken me not to the bird,
but rather to the bush on my front lawn.

In 1664, I migrated to Roanoke, Virginia from England.
Centuries earlier, in coat of chain and mail, I laid down my life
for God, Normandy and William The Conqueror.
Since then, regrets I've had more than a dozen.

On the subject of Roanoke's Lost Colony,
I'll recount you things no living soul has heard to date.
However, in countless migrations,
facts do get muddled.

Details blur,
details erase and sink.
So many nebulae to trip,
even we ghosts get fuzzy.