She kneels before her vestal virgins,
prayerful, pious, beneath the underbelly
of a cauterizing summer wind.
Vigorous, trailing, heavy with life,
butternuts strip the soil bare;
gorging on the Eucharist of
pig slurry and the juice
of a hundred sacrificial worms.
The ground reeks with her offerings
to a pulpit-priest that
will not be appeased.
There will be no forgiveness.
Too hot, too dry,
her bees, the few that still remain,
stutter and retreat into a savage shade.
They will not, cannot, sex her offspring;
not this season.
Not for all her prayers
and ardent pleadings.
And when the time comes
she will need to pluck
the stamen from the males,
to press pollen into pistil, forcing
life where none sustains –
or suffer another season without.