Song of Cybele

Song of Cybele

The song of Cybele still visits me
upon cool January mornings, just
before the frost has burned away
I hear her quiver on days like today.

She who tumbled, layering the snow
about her, arbitrary armor. Built
to last one winter, nay, even a gaze,
A penny picture paper-cut could melt.

Panoply of an orchid in its pot,
Thrice replanted, dropping all her blooms.
Naked in her rest they’d thought her dead
And buried her beneath the shadowy moon.

She staggered out and groping for the light,
In all her strength, that slight might, fought to leech
another soul’s good deed, and desperate,
she clawed the closest vein, her own outlet.

And now her armor, ropes of silk and pearls
And diamonds dug from West African earth
Challenge the silence of resembled beds;
Those airless chambers, mines for the near dead.

Cruel hauntings having come so close to truth
Do thin her skin and make her blood run blue.
Poor little flower, if she only knew
Some warmer soil to bravely place her root.

No peridot, no diamond could dispute
The courage of good nature, such a feature
Could grow a rhododendron of a creature.



[copyright Taylor Roberts, 2010]