Demeter the Pilgrim

Love, she thought, would bring her back,

so she took the guise of crone,

black robes, gaunt face reflecting

the agony that had brought her

to the family at the well. She was searching,

crying, reduced from goddess

to one with an arm outstretched.

Even human pity would do, a human child.

For aren't all babies alike

in their physical, grasping selves,

their unmediated need?

A hurricane, a famine.

Who could deny the weather, the iron ocean

rocking, the fear they all would break

in the end. An old woman-

who wouldn't take her in?

She made herself useful, tending

the hearth, the infant who had learned

to babble and reach. When she took him

in her arms, head against her breast,

all the green world washed over her,

smell and touch returned to the source.

You know the story. We've passed it down,

a token in the gray landscape, a winter

you make your own. Once again,

it's not so much the actual moment

the girl is snatched away, but the watching,

time waiting with its noose,

all your terror balanced there.

And the future

slides out like the fog offshore,

its own continent,

floating between the sea and sky.