They rise, sometimes, to watch her
as she awakes, pink as a newly born babe.
Behind her the sky blushes
green,
yellow,
red,
and her flaming fingers tickle the flowers
that turn their faces to bathe in her light.
Now she has risen. They are awed at her dawn
forgetting her birth brings them further from theirs.

she ripens and rises with each passing hour,
a golden-skinned maiden that clings to the sky.
They bask in the heat of her amorous gaze and
she kisses their skin with luminous lips
that stain them brown and red.
Fully grown, now, she stands tall and proud,
her flaxen locks white against pale, wispy clouds.
They delight as she comes to her radiant prime
and as she reaches hers they drift further from theirs.

They come out once more as she descends.
to watch her as she falls.
The clouds tarnish with floods of her blood
that stain their faces crimson.
Her burning fingers struggle and grip
the edge of her distant coffin.
Their shivering ends as she sinks to her grave
and from the darkness her white ghost rises.
Between pale, pockmarked cheeks,
frigid eyes survey the scape
though their sense is shut and her skin is cold.
And she crosses the sky as she did in her life,
to be born once more when the morning comes.
They are awed by her death, forgetting, still,
that each of her deaths brings them closer to theirs.