The Wild Women

The Wild Women

A vale of shadow vast as all the forest
floods the meadow trees,
where woodland nymphs in moonlit pastures
dance Elusian mysteries.

Some faun or satyr pipes along
just back behind the black unseen.

In bustling rush,
with kill borne forth,
out from the brush
the huntress queens,
bewitched bare-skinned
warrior women
treading tips of naked feet,
whose wild-eyed faces,
all half-painted
with blood of sacrificial beasts,
are lit with primal spirit
of enchanted huntress fiery trance,
while Artemis appears and joins
the Earthly evening’s sacred dance
around the flaming hearth
lit by Hestia’s own eternal light—
she sits in motherly observation of the cultist ritual rite.

When all’s in full crescendo
moving in laconic rhythmic spree,
descend with heavenly harvest down
Demeter and Persephone.

In frenzied furor now dance the dancers
with thrusting spears through blood-drenched meat,
they penetrate into the fires with fertile force and energy,
spring forth and cast out flickering sparks,
each falls into a bonfire new,
so through the meadow
bright as mid-day light,
divine delight imbues,
the sacred feast and sacrifice
roast flaring over immortal flame
from goddess magic manifest
‘mid Autumn matriarch Beltane.