Readers scour the white pebble beach when the tide rolls in that certain way
frothy, black as calligraphy ink still drying on the page beneath the sun mid-day
collecting omens on the rocks to declare the future or omni-present fortune
heel, toe, stained with a skeptic life your sky-blue silk and black bristles
carry along over the landscape like a paintbrush, leaving a thin red line
the murky tide of fortune is high

A goat dances on its hind legs the kagura in the traditional garb of the Miko
with his foreign tongue hanging long from his foaming mouth and horned head
wildly speaking of heresies yet to come and blaspheming in manners not invented
unaccompanied, the brush approaches this desecration of all sense standing
with hobbled feet from the miles of prophesied shore that never foretold its coming
to stare it eye-to-eye, without kneeling, as soon as the demoted kami locks eyes
the dance stops, the tide itself stops and begins to roll backwards, recoiling from the land
where this thing has set foot

Clots in the thick, wooly fur of the beast form first, revealing the reversal
dry death rolls wetly backwards up the throat into a long cut,
near severance of the head, a fountain erupts from the terrain in four pillars
all flowing back into the eyes, nostrils and mouth of the goat
without revealing the terror or flailing away, she stands witness to it
stalwart with stoic determination and faith, nothing can deter her
unnatural as it may be, the loosely hanging fit of the Miko fall to the ground
a bleating animal stands on all fours, and leads her into a temple of white ash
high up in the thin air and snow of the mountains, where there is only the unwritten of the pale to behold
with only the trail of her long spindling fate behind her,
and not a natural thing occurs beyond the Kami's gate where they meet
and nothing good can happen once she was drawn to the dance
now a queen in ice, bloodless for all her love given
loveless for all her love given, godless, faithless
and alone.