Humbler gods searched the world over,

stalking animals, for predatory distinction

between death ignoble and death otherwise.
Talking by their campfires at night in winter
they roasted the flesh of succulent rabbits:
a hawk and ibis and lion in natural clothes.
"The Reptile's gone," the lion purred, "extinct.
We can't find him anywhere, everywhere."
For an orbit of seasons the hunters tracked
untrackable Ophion in the stars and seas.
"What I don't get, is," the ibis with his beak
scratched on papyrus the record of their journeys,
"Ophion's ability insincerely to fool us.
No actor could be so convincingly false.
Horus, you don't know how persuasive he was."
Leonine Hercules agreed in the dark light.
"I don't think he was lying. He meant it.
You've said yourself, Lord, he was a father
you loved and he'd always helped you, so."
Horus didn't respond, too deep in thought
in these questions confusing death in him.
Delicious though meat crackling on a spit
tasted and smelled injudicious hunting
was marred to him by victims unwilling.
What method could better serve the appetites
than trapping doves by raptors arbitrary?
Hathor already as White Calf Maiden divine
in far pastures conceived just such solutions
for better hunting and gathering life economically.
In her solitude in fields and wide rivers,
where men had reverted savagely in tribes
best ruined after their eras technological,
she knew victims helpless with age and injury
deserved considerate help and Ceremony.
Grazing on alfalfa growing wild and unrooting
didn't kill the grass at all or unkindly,
for she only chewed cud of sweet hay
without cutting its life of its sustaining root.
Contented Cow, on the High Plains She
roamed slowly and freer than tall wheat
untamed, adaptable, amber fields of grain
flourishing again after man's interference;
arguably shrugging off his old Progress
Set had once lamented in olden days.
She couldn't see the point of farming
because she didn't have a choice anyway.
She was a four-legged bovine mammal
naked in her hide and cloven brown hooves.
Talking may or may not with magpies
have been necessary in cottonwood groves
by shallow western creeks, on cold ground,
but what did they have to say to each other
except of the way which wind was blowing?
In one moment the pine trees were quiet;
and then they responded across their clumps
before their needles moved to the Sounds
they made of the soundless Winds arriving
swirling first from one direction or other
on another twist and turn pressurized, so,
yet directional from unintelligible sources.
All the animals, bugs, and trees all the time
sat and listened interminably to the Waves
(a Third Entity neither mortal or divine).
Contemplation didn't involve much more
than that, but in That meditation Death
didn't scare her as much as it used to.
A Child no longer remembered reminded
her no more of Age or the Moon passing;
orbiting Daughter wobbling Monthly She was
the daughter untouched by motherly concern.
Blessedly foraging, as such, on wild barley
one fine day in the breeze, without care,
a stalk of sweet corn drew her taste buds
and the tall leaves green on yellow said
"Suck off my juicy fruit, White Calf."
She stared at the tall elegant Root Standing
that had spoken to her impossibly as a Plant.
Reaching ten feet tall it was ripe as a tree
more handsome than ever bull or man
had ever been - dark emerald garments
royally flowing more than soft leaves merely
cloaked the graceful Vegetable Prince, who,
sent as if by summer zephyrs, danced
with bulging pockets of corn so fat they
were as hard and three feet long each;
Omphalli as shapely as the arm of a god.
"What did you say?" she asked incredulous.
"Did you say something to me, green Sir?"
Hallucinatory down-drafts on the prairie
shaped the Root Stalking her like a Serapis
wrapped in hides and raiment of Nile;
a profane Trickster a Coyote or thorn
dizzying a curious girl with suddenness
and no talk, impulsive, rapt, anti-natural
realms animal and vegetable joined!
If men in man-made skins of deer and elk
saw it that day they'd have seen clouds white
or whirlwinds of dust and smoke only,
you see, for the eyes of ape-men reduced
were diminished in priority by then, by Zeos.
Nor was it even anticipated by Hathor that
that afternoon that her maidenhood would
be taken, and she'd be as White Buffalo Woman.
In response the trickster Sweet Medicine
Standing of the Cheyennes and Iktomi
(Dionysos a phallus lord from Old Europe)
lay in ruins in bones at her feet in snakes.
Like Persephone rapt or Medusa Athene wife
Hathor was a Gorgon on the aegis-shield high,
First Mother and Death impregnated anew!
Her serpents picked the bull's skull clean,
a corn stalk rotting brown by winter
harvested. Demeter in Spring Persephone
born to bring in the era of cattle after apes
better, cleaner, unstressed of aggression,
and Sweet Medicine forever honored as Hades
sacrificial king, Osiris, Dionysos, God.
"Once his seed in us, daughter, is spent,"
the cow to the growing female calf explained,
"the bull dies of necessity to better the death
like Zeos reducing the child's habituation.
He will therefore, when he is ready, and wind's
right, come to us come to you Creation
of and for whatever names to be next."
The good girl on four hooves sweetly
gave her great mother a kiss in bed
where they'd ben talking on soft flowers.
Wohpe the meteor-virgin the Lakotas
called her, from the stars, in legends
the old oral traditions shamans recalled.
The first of them a hawk the men called
Shaman landed on a chokecherry nearby
(a god they called Horus Sweet Medicine)
and watched the cows long-lost at home.
Poignant, the First Birdman and Founder
of their alternative civilization begun Zeos
began to cry a bird's kindliest teardrops
for them, for Ethic's surprising renewal
in feather and horn, sustainable crop,
herbivores replacing savagely carnivores,
cattle supplanting apes and unmercifully.
Dynamic bird-song and meadowlarks
perked the magnificent heifer's white ears
up to the music drifting familiar in airs
she knew her Nobly reminded kin sang.
Persephone Wohpe the milky nymph
pricked her black nose at the melodies too,
puberty stirred, in oestrus achromatic
the complement (in her) or antagonist
of black ravens courtiers of gray Hawk
flying on them accompanied as he was
by colorless reflections of visible wavelength.
"Magical Goddess," the king at the head
genuflected before the girl's imperial Dame
and choruses of larks and jays followed,
hummingbirds and crows, singing in so many
tunes and dissonant chords as to raise
such a racket they scared away the toads.
"Obviously Apollo," the Hawk Lord ruffled
and fanned his ailerons out like a cape,
"has not here conducted the lessons of Orpheus
in harmony or assonance for the birds."
He jumped around happily at his great joke.
"Good morning, Sister Isis, you're looking well.
And this must be our cherished Calf Maiden
whom we've all heard so much about. Hi.
I'm the king of the world, let me introduce myself.
Are you ready to start a great new Herd?"
White Buffalo shook her head, in spite of herself.
"Go away Zeos. Shoo. We don't need you at all.
This is too silly to be taken seriously by us."
The glorious brown and gray merlin flipped
up and over in acrobatics so entertaining
the calf herself laughed and rolled in the dirt,
while scores of blue starlings and swifts speedy
dive-bombed at each other on trapezes of
locust trees and swinging from willows
branching willows over azure creek beds,
and the whole savannah turned into a circus
of wildly racing sparrows, finches, and bees.
Never had there been a happier day on earth
despite a few butterflies flustered in the melee,
and the mother-of-all resting in the shade
tolerantly watching children and grown men.
For, in the fun and out of the play,
the Hawk-King had become a shamanic Chief
Sweet Medicine red-skinned with black hair,
dressed simply in hemp trousers and blouse
and mocassins woven by donated elms.
He was she saw her lover the Corn Prince
become human and perfectly proportioned.
Wohpe fell utterly in love at first sight
with his dreamy black eyes and powerful;
able, seemingly, also to fly like an eagle
hovering over him like a halo of energy.
While as a bull he might have done better
most of all she loved his grinning irreverence
reminiscent of the silly birds and foolish.
"White Calf, are you kidding, or calving,"
he laughed, "making love-eyes at a species not yours?
How can a man, a goat kid, or a stalk of corn
stalk animals foreign to their plant-like origins?"
Isis snorted and pawed the ground at last.
"Enough of this. Go, Sweet Medicine, Clown,
to the savage tribal village of men-apes
and wolves dogging in the roots for bones
and try to teach them what you believe in.
I'll believe it when I see it, that babboons
can rise to the level of cattle and our grain."
The playful carefree ecosystem abundant
uninterfered as it was anymore
by men and their crimes of the long Past
unwealthily paused at their Queen's words;
for no squirrels or great acorn oaks
wanted or liked the squalling monkeys
from the dirty villages included in it -
th'ecology harmony apes didn't like.
Sweet Medicine himself reincarnate Zeos
paused and questioned the White Cow too.
"Wife, we've been over all this before,
battling old battles with and of Old Set
and his followers hollering from the trees,
jungle creatures, trapeze artists unlike any
chipmunks or cats innocent among us.
If men want to kill the deer and elk
for skins and raw uncooked meat, let 'em.
I don't want anything more to do with them."
Persephone admired him even more for that,
for standing up to her domineering mother,
colossal Sovereign as she was and Giant.
All the animals and plants too were with him.
Isis Renewed saw it all and sighed too.
"Yes, the men are savages and killer apes
repulsive to every standard of decency.
That's why we must clean them up, Red King.
They'll harm us all, as they do to our brothers
the deer and elk and noble domestic sisters,
eventually, harmfully, Old Set's old strategy.
We have no choice. We have a decision.
Somewhere I know you know, Husband,
our daughter's grandfather lurks there for us
ever to challenge Great-Grandmother Earth."
Solemn Council all life-forms in revelation
these answers awaited from Master fauna,
flora, weathering storms predictable or not.
The imbalance wavering on sea and land
teetered and tottered in the hearts and minds
of Gaia's children on the playgrounds of war.