Song for Artemis

Song for Artemis

Sonnets are too rigid--too many rules.

We spilled seed many nights in that tent/

Which means we stayed to watch the pine cones drop and

listen to the wind through the rocks and

the rush of the pure water flowing from lake to lake/

We hiked and we camped and after awhile we forgot the
days were Thursday or Sunday, because I forgot the
days with you/
And your belly grew with every breath,
and our child was born of nature,
conceived in the wilderness/
All of those bullshit constructs and other people's expectations of
what you or I should do, what was supposed to be right,
but that wasn't actually living, no
it was dying and the preservation of death and
not changing, because when you change
it scares people most of the time/
And we lived in a Berkeley loft and watched the fog
roll in every evening from the perch of
our dinner table/
Entertaining guests, helping our child with homework,
and saving up days for another multi-week hike
across the John Muir Trail.

- July 16, 2014, Rae Lakes