By Her Voice

Pandora is bored by the yammering,
the chronic complaints and blame,
pointed fingers and piety.

Why can't she be like the hawks
that spiral on invisible thermals,
loop circles against a sapphire sky?

Through shadows thrown by the mute sun,
only a sound of wind in scraggy pines,
only the music of air at a feather's edge.

She wants a world like that—
all emptiness and light,
a firmament of silence

arching above the mountains, flooding sunset,
streaming onto the scraped pages
where her myth must be written

and burned. The truth will rise
as transient as smoke
or outstretched wings.