She Descends

 Where love was gone

the dry world sighed for what was lost

and the maiden left her couch to see:

Nothing bloomed in the garden

and no tree bore fruit. 

The air had no birdsong and

rain would not fall.

She would find love and return.

What she can't take with her 

will drop onto the path:

the cloak of invulnerability,

her shining armor,

her girdle of confidence,

her many jewels,

her sword of discerning,

the words of power--

gone.

The skin unwound from her flesh,

the fat rendered in the heat,

the nerves exposed and made

into a garland for a holy tree.

Her bones walked into

the land of the dead

to find her love.

There is down and then

there is down, only darkness

in the place the sun never sees,

and uncertain things stare

at the white of her bones

in the eternal night of 

the land of the dead.

Her tendons snap

in the blackness

like the string of a bow

as her feet barely stir 

the dust.

Memory is a distraction.

Ghosts of when and how taunt her

like the thought of wine

in the mind of a

thirsting man,

She knows what was

like the traces of dry leaves

reminds of the time when 

they were green.

Her greenness is below.

She sinks like a root

in the cool of the earth.

She knows what must be again.