MAD KATE

“Heaven is comfort, but it's still not living.” - Alice Sebold, ‘The Lovely Bones’
 
An Elena Kalis photograph has been provided by Magpie Tales to function as inspiration for all who will take up her creative writing challenge. Here is my offering:

Mad Kate
 
‘Mad Kate’, they called her
When she walked the fields alone,
Her hair undone and flowing,
Her dress windblown
And her hands full of the wild heather she had plucked.
 
Mad Kate, they said, was wayward,
A maid with a savage nature and a wild streak
Defiant of every rule and convention;
She lived alone, after all,
And did what she wanted – just to please herself…
 
Mad Kate, with windswept hair,
And freckled face, and sunny smile
Ready to turn to mirthful laughter;
With breath as sweet as the wild honey she ate,
And a bosom that smelt of lily and lavender.
 
Mad Kate, they said, would come to no good –
And even the village idiot was wise
Compared to her, so headstrong was she;
The woods more home to her
Than any confining village cottage that would cage her.
 
And when a village lad,
Resentful of her firm refusals, lay in wait,
And forced himself upon her in the green wood,
Mad Kate’s futile wails only echoed pointlessly,
As he ran away, his guilt assuaged easily enough, for she was mad.
 
Mad Kate, they said would come to no good –
And when her lifeless body was found in deep water,
They shook their heads, so satisfied they were proven right:
The girl was looking for trouble, she was daft,
And all her gallivanting did do her in at last.