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.
