by Jane Frank
1. Clotho
I feel her thread spinning,
spooling ahead through a sea of
guinea grass as I run
down the hill to the smooth
isthmus lawn, the waiting swans—
this moment its own mystical cosmogony
The rays that strike my face
come from hers, her expression
the cloud pattern printed
on the linen cloth of the lagoon,
her voice one with the music of sweet
sirens in the cool rushing air
2. Lachesis
I sense her cut the pieces,
allotting them neatly to match
the length of questions typed in long
frosted nights, the time faces
wait at a high window, the weight
of the moon’s trespass
in the garden of rhododendrons,
the pace of pale deer
in the park through a fretwork
of yew branches
She measures the seconds
a gate swings on rusty hinges,
the number of steps back to the locked
green door, the minutes I stand in the rain
before I realise it is falling loudly
and that she is the disapproving
cold I am wrapped in
3. Atropos
I hear her sharpening shears
with a virus burrowing
in human touch, so sometimes I
imagine her decisions are the thrashing
noises of an Easter storm
when the gallery of photographs
watch me try to sleep, or if
my youngest son’s small heartbeat is strong
enough to hear in a hideous dark,
when decisions made long ago
are ill-fated shipwrecks
There are invisible knots, but I worry
about these thinning days in late autumn,
faces that spin in a haze of Nyx’s stars,
habitual walks beside the lazy
stretch of placid water when
its horizon is the darkest cut
at the end of the sky