We had a lot in common:
Grey eyes to stop and summon;
A taste for shifts and shuttles,
For instigating battles;
An aptitude for order,
A talent to embroider.
We kept ourselves in stitches;
We were each other’s matches.

As deity and woman,
We shared a kind of famine;
Vicarious in action,
Our work confined to fiction,
To woven elegiacs,
We craved our own heroics:
To beat our favourite heroes;
To share their blazing sorrows.

What have we now in common,
Besides not being human?
Only the understanding
Of what is past amending:
That all this endless weaving
Is just suspended living.
That loving is devouring.
That starving is enduring.

*****

Julia Griffin writes: “That appeared in Mezzo Cammin 14.2 (Winter, 2019). I’m pleased with it because I feel the form works with the subject-matter. It was inspired by a dear friend of mine, Candy Schille, who died tragically in November 2017: she was so quick and charismatic, and we had a sort of sparring relationship before we became friends.”

Julia Griffin lives in south-east Georgia/ south-east England. She has published in Light, LUPO, Mezzo Cammin, and some other places, though Poetry and The New Yorker indicate that they would rather publish Marcus Bales than her. Her poem ‘Wasp Waste’ was reprinted in the Potcake Chapbook ‘Robots and Rockets‘, and much more of her poetry can be found in Light, at https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/?s=julia+g&submit=Search

Photo: “Arachne” by J. Star is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.