ARTEMIS

For those who will always struggle against desecration.

by V. B. Price

Bear mother, supple,
child-tumbling, ferocious,

hair-raising
with love,

Great Artemis, cyclone
of perfection,

She is called Kallisto,
the most beautiful

in Her playing
and in Her rage.

Goddess of unmarred snow,
of nine-year-old girls,

of magma, infancy,
of inner poise, integrity,

all boundlessness,
the holy spirit of the undisturbed,

we hear of Her still
on a mesa of grasses,

and sage steppes,
ungrazed Artemisia,

moon gray,
untouched for ten thousand years,

in Utah,
not Arkadia,

the goddess of No Man’s Mesa
who won’t tolerate

being looked at,
and is never to be touched.

Scar roads through Her meadows
and she knows no mercy.

She is everywhere
we’ve never been,

the goddess of places no one should go.
In the moonlight of forever,

we can barely see
menageries of spring born

dancing in her honor
in the perfect

place before beginning,
which never ends.

That’s as close to Her
as we may get:

observers of strange dancing.
We must praise Her

far away
in our minds.

Great Artemis, savior
of the unexplored,

goddess of the feral
who loathes extinctions,

who is the cause of all extinction,
mistress of the fittest

and the least fit,
of all that is fruitful

in itself, for no
other purpose,

Goddess, when nothing clean and early
is left upon the earth,

when what we do
with consciousness

leaves our minds
so muscle-bound

we’re paralyzed,
confusing power

with survival,
will You stop us,

take the world back from us
year by disastrous year?

Or will you save
what’s left of us that’s wild,

teach us
how to free ourselves again,

how to be
untamed, like You,

by appetite and grasping,
by the yokes

of status and possession,
luxury and speed?

You are never
not free, even now.

And we are waiting.
We know You will make something happen,

some terrible change
we could never foretell —

like leaves turning to poison,
or birds farting smog,

like skin
eating muscle,

or dirt
eating seeds —

something will shake us,
will force us

to submit,
collapse,

renew.
And from the debris,

the die off,
the judgment

of cause and effect,
You will arise

clean as all beginnings
in minds

craving freedom
more than license,

liberty more
than plenty.

(Image derived from photos by Dick Thompson and Eduardo Francisco Vazquez Murillo)