Selene Meets Her Lover on a Hill
Ellen Webre
Once, you may have been dappled gold,
stealing kisses off the wind, fingers stained blue
from thorny blackberries, always returning
at sundown to a mother’s hearth. Now, lily pale
in the glow of me, do you regret my choice?
If I had been seized in the jaws of wolves,
shredded to entrails and scattered in the dirt,
it would have been a kinder fate, to wander
hollowed and hopeless beneath the earth.
But I am seared in this eternal moonlight,
blistered in kisses so clear, so true, no mortal
should survive. I am helpless. I am yours.
I am screaming as your sister’s crickets scream,
oh I am sobbing like the owl’s song, and all
the pleasures of the world cannot compare
to the jasmine of your tender arms,
the taste of your of dew on my lips.
Cauldron Anthology
41