Castle on the River Cher

Torchlit halls linked galleries
and ballrooms. The castle itself
linked the banks of the river
with black-and-white tiles
 
that felt minuets and waltzes.
Later, pawns crossed the checkerboard
that was then scuffed by
the jackboots of soldiers
 
of a “thousand year Reich”
that lasted only twelve—
a fraction of the fuehrer’s
promised prediction.
 
Paying the Loire tribute,
Cher rises in the northwest,
then flows across a plateau
to join the Yevre at Vierzon.
  
Eighteenth century masons
built the chateau on pilings
of a sixteenth century mill:
a castle more squat than wide.
 
Taking flight from former
Gothic weight, the structure
would later offer flight
to the builders' descendants.
 
They had no way of knowing,
these workmen who joined
two shores with stone,
what avenue they would leave.
 
As they built this architectural
bridge on arched columns,
they girded generations backward
and forward. They did not see
 
things that would be yet
still supplied a path to freedom
for their great-grandchildren’s
grandchildren.