I knelt before her

Today I knelt before her

My sister from an ethereal realm

Mothering my grieven lowered form

Her arms holding what I could not

This love I have felt among man

The young girl throwing herself

Wild with abandon

The joy of tilling soil and soul

With yielding breath

In the fields of love

Yet it has been taken again

For no mans heart steadies

Like hers.

Only a goddess saint knows

The worth of her equal

And so I reach

Hands taut on her breasts

Like a child insatiable

To unveil the cloak

Eclipsing light

Marbled lips, still

Smiling softly,

In refusing disrobing

Demanding transparency of

My own fleshen cloak

Revealing a bleeding heart

the truer offering needed

Here among the living

-Artemis Mandala