What did we do but
grow a girl from a seed
and watch her curl in hues
of the green and gold of life,
to be fair and loved and fallen,
in the all-hallowed days that come
by fire-and-salamander fusion,
changing the summer to autumn.

What a she time it was
in all the he of places.
Twin gifts: her to the world,
and the world from her palms.

Torch lights searched the night for her,
crisscrossing the empty intersections,
plumbing the echoes and the depths.
Her cries were cast like seeds,
to fall as wheat before the halberds:
arms a-wide, legs a-moving in arcs,
cutting the stalks and husking the life,
the just-before and the ever-after.

[Joseph Kenyon teaches myth and writing inside Philadelphia and lives outside of Philadelphia. His work has appeared in The South-East Asia Review, Poe Studies, Scribble, and TPQ, among other journals.]