A Fatalism

It's as if every season, she forfeits 
one thing more for the dead

trees' return to life, for the ice to thaw 
so the bluegreen blood of cuttlefish 

can pulse again through their 
three hearts. No one ever asks 

how many times she has had to do it— 
or what's collected as ransom each time, 

a hundred times, no, a thousand or more, 
for the god in the underworld— that bruiser 

and extortioner—to release his claims on 
the daughter. Was she like that once,

herself; and who paid her price? Now  
that she's the one who does the supplicating,  

she would like to disappear where a line bisects 
the sky at the place where the land seems to end.