The Goddess Of Death Wishes Otherwise

The Goddess Of Death Wishes Otherwise

And so my season comes early, hills
all polished with its glaze, cauldron-pour
of heavy sleet. They gleam
like the skulls I will scour and stack
along the garden's landscape.

How many will die this year?
Even I don't know that number.
It's hidden in stone, leaf or quill
left bird-fallen where a higher god
might use it to etch
a rosary of blue veins
along my breast, his mortal count
blurred under the skin.

Some village women say
I am given shadow wings like the crow,
but mine are a tangled fray
of roots. With them I reap the dust
and hover in this cold sky
undulating songs of death.

I am tired of being that wild harp,
that wash line of lament
on which the soldier's wife
poignantly hangs her heart. So come
Creator! Banish the Winter moon.
Resuscitate Indian Summer
and as her bottle brush sweeps
away those particles of frost,
let me stay long enough
to love a man and carry his seed
not his migrating soul.
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Note --- The painting is called, "The Melody of Your Demise" By Linda Berkgvist.