Something for Orion

We are in the shadowlands Orion

and your bow here seems drawn

but useless against this foe.

The world turns and your position

changes as Draco seeks to devour

the hope in our hearts.

Tonight your arms long absent

encircle me safe and warm;

I do not fear this with you here.

Breath against skin as fingers

dance in the fire of my hair

longing only to love me again.

Hubris, perhaps, was our tumbler

into this unfamiliar forest whose

night is never ending.

Or, maybe, like most stories we are

subject to nothing more than chaos

before the carrion crows gawking.

Yet, your breathing stills my own

struggling breath to a steady 

dithyramb of blessings for life.

Just two more months.

Just two.

Our hearts hanging on a thread

with the Three Crones whose

silver scissors poise to break them.

Oh Orion I do not want you to go!

I would have you hold me 

to keep Hades face from my thoughts.

You hold me tighter knowing, as do I,

that I am fragile as flesh and bone;

your light a ward against the dark.

--Artemis

The School of Athens

Once I marveled at the bright blue sky
as philosophers gathered in geometric halls
to argue reason and balance.
I never could abide reason.
Instead, I was lost in false perspective
pigments whose splash sent my heart
soaring past do or do not.
Have you ever once just stopped asking why?
Just once became a conductor for the universe; removed
the rubber casings of our soles (souls?) to feel
grass green and cold between spring toes or mud
slick like a child from a womb give birth to amazement?
Socrates asked us to balance our souls without ever
not once explaining that our soul is not the shadow
but a spark that throws shadows into darkness
creating a world electric wrought, each our own.
Mystery is an experience, not a puzzle.  Solutions
are dead things with no hope for growth or change.
So tonight I listen to the mystery as it grows
subtle beneath flesh and bone like a prayer
praising, not reason, but awe for what can be
when so many reasons tell us that hemlock
will stop our breath.

Cassandra

Once the sun kissed my skin;
my eyes half lidded
I kissed back.
I did not know it then
I was forever marked
scorched
scarred his own.
Apollo you come again
predicting ruin
your snakes bound
in my brain.
Hades cool ebony eyes
level headed stare me down
and I sit still waiting again
for this fire to burn
a brazier in my soul.