Sometimes when bad news comes, all that helps is writing poetry. Even the stronger, most eloquent poetry of others isn’t enough. That upwelling has to be voiced, and poetry is all that helps. This was one of those weeks: a dear friend w/ Lou Gehrig’s disease. Another whose partner has only a very little time left… The only way to cope is to write it out…

Sisters Fate ~

There are three of them.

Blind women who hold within arthritic hands

our futures. Skeins of vivid silk — your life,

my life, the lovers of friends —

spill through gnarled fingers

Catching    tearing    snarling.

Clotho the spinner of birth

who looks perhaps like weavers do

her thumb wide and flat from twisting thread.

Lachesis, the middle sister, measures.

She holds the short length that will be

your life, my loss, the grief

that will entangle me

for Atropos, the eldest sister.

Her eyes are grey stones

She reaches into deep pockets

for silver blades.

Sharper than loss, darker than memory,

they snip.

snick snick snick

Deaf and blind, these three puppeteers

spin and measure         sever

the threads that tie your life to mine

and you float free of need

desire      language

all that tethered you to this day, your life

my hands. I reach for you, your shadow.

The sun sets and you fade into the night.

The sisters are still.