Doe, Jane.

Google Maps shows the street view of where you lay, shallow in the weeds, listening to the night sounds.  The muted drone of planes overhead,  your body in the flight path of travelers headed up and away.

The backfire of the car’s engine.                                                                               The scrape and jangle of chain link fencing.                                                           The stridulation of crickets.                                                                                     The hum of electric wires threading the spaces between abandoned work sites.   The murmur of storm water runoff following its concrete path into the sewer drain.

Face down, you couldn’t see Mercury shining above the eastern horizon, visible between the broken streetlights.  The fleet-footed messenger disappeared in the morning twilight, chased away by the call of the siren.

You, the goddess Maia, calling him home.

‘The Goddess’ by Michael Bowen.