thingummy

demeter as cypress

those hands of his, chilled and brittle as just-turned earth,
taking her under roots and blind worms,
his dust-choked halls, heavy-veined stones
weighing her down, lightless, buried, the cries
of torment writhing in her ears, sans night, sans day,

my beautiful girl, with hair spun down
to her ankles, who caught sun's rays and flung
them out around her like liquid,
every step
a song
with an arc deep as the sky.

my hands knot supplicant.
i do not know how to kneel
but i have knelt. like a tree's limb
battered
under a ceaseless wind.