Artemis

An absence of darkness that runs through light,
The shape of a second thought borne on dreams,
The tailwind of the world’s desire breathes
Its tortured wisdom into the dead land
Whose birth is easing out winter’s decay
With the slime of greenness more scapegoated
Than mortality. She runs, she pants, she
Hears the sounds and sighs of her creatures, her
earth, her universe spun out of feces
and salt and clawed cliffs. She comes to the place
we never expect because, human, we don’t.
Her layers of fur and fat and muscle weight
us down. She wastes no time on a loving
apology. She wounds with her presence.

–Shaun Perkins