poetryandarete:

Hymn to Artemis of the Drowned Birches

Mistress of beasts,

Whether weighty and waddling

Loping and lean

In the darkness of the slow-rising dawn

I call to you

*

The bears enter town here

The trash bins have locked lids

When I walk to class the forest presses up against the breaking spear tops

Of the Canadian Shield

And it whispers about the onset of frost

*

Goddess, this weather makes beasts of us all

As the mushrooms grow plump on the leaf layer rot

We are on our knees foraging –

Like any animal when the chill sets in

The low hanging rosehips and staining sumac

Are warnings: gather now

Or regret

*

I have always seen the graceful birch and thought of you

But the beavers by the lake have devastated them

Teeth marks so fresh the wood is discoloured

The beasts have dragged them into the water which sits still

(Deceivingly so)

And some are left rotting, shore stranded

The gluttonous ruins of this slow-building season

*

Someone told me once that birches were called widowmakers

For the rot in the inside is long hidden by the outer paper bark

Goddess, you must smile

(Being a widowmaker yourself)

For you know too well that eventually the paper falls apart to reveal that ever creeping death

Your sister-cousin has taken her first steps below the earth – you know this because:

How things begin to rot around you, mistress! How even the living begin to stink!

Send out your beasts, your holy hunting dogs

Let your hurried hungry arrows miss the crowns of every baby I catch this year

Let the mothers rejoice or mourn as they will;

I am with you, goddess, whatever comes.