The mating time was brief this year.

Our women sang notes like

floss on the wine-wind plains.

A human came who forced his seed

on Ala of the Yellow Eyes. We pretended

to be honored; we felt otherwise.

After, Ala wasn’t the same.

She cut her marvelous hair

which had been dark and long

grown down below her legs.

She wandered off to the Darklands,

heavy with child and none to celebrate.

We mourn her fate. If she survives,

she’ll raise his spawn alone.

She was the envy of us all.

When the child is born,

she’ll burn his father’s image

in the sands of our dead oceans.

The human sits on our sacred stones.

He preens his beard and leers at females,

with no more thoughts to waste on Ala;

he never even knew her name.

Come burrow season, we prepare,

sharpen our talons on caddo root.

When the freezing gales begin,

the human will demand sanctuary,

as his kind always does.

We will confirm his welcome

with the strewing of his bones.

—Marge Simon

South

You promised me no problems

when the temperatures dropped,

assured me that we were prepared.

Holding hands we watched

the great migration south.

With synthetic skins, cryo foods,

and prefab domes, you said we couldn’t lose.

There was little need to leave the domes.

Safe from the fierce glacial winds,

we made love on autumn colored furs.

Yet you were the first to grow restless,

to stand all night at the southern window

following the great move of stars.

We shared the bitter smoke of silence

until one morning, you were gone.

I waited for you, my fingers

tracing love symbols on the icy glass.

I slept with the red wing of your guitar.

Then moon-shadow tall, you came home.