Persephone

In darkness Persephone walks

the earth flinches

with every absentminded footfall.

She does not speak, she listens,

and listening, hears her rough soles

smooth and cut, chip and polish

her surrounding plateau of shadows.

Every forward step she takes,

she makes the dark earth tremor.

Persephone walks. On and on

and on she walks and when

- pre-dawn - she stops

she finds she's standing still

on solid ground; so strange

and dark a land she knows

she's not been here before

nor felt the restless press

of moths mistaking her presence

for a candle; how slight

their quiet antennae tracing

the contours of her face,

her heart - each passing wing,

an eye; each eye, a question

hovering.