Fates, Virgins, Valkyrie

The Fates are all weavers - women who
work the looms, heddle and treadle and
shuttle and numbers innumerable, dancing
through their nimble quick minds.
Is it any wonder these solitary ponderers are
our model for Time? Patterns and fractals
in threads like the tangles of wandering lives.

Do you know why the huntress is a maiden?
She is not the virgin, untouched and inviolate.
She is wild like the moon and the herbs
that bring both blood and freedom at need.
She is the lifeblood of her people when
the last of the stored bounty is gone.
She bears their burden, eats the sin.

Mothers are multitudes and none are the same -
Kali and Hera yes, chaos and order, and
Ceridwen, who sometimes eats her young.
Mary is a stranger to them, a wetnurse and shrew,
in tawdry mimicry of their ferocious power.
(Oh, but the men grabbed Mary long ago,
retuning her voice to feed their own fates.)

Do you know the Morrigan? Raven-winged girls
who feast on the battlefield, scavengers and
psychopomps. Do you know “Valkyrie” means,
“Eater of the Dead?”. Do you know fairy rings
grow above underground corpses? Do you know
why there is an Easter Bunny? Do you see how
the Spring becomes the Queen of Hell, now?

We have set them up, lonely and looming,
we have pushed them down into a roil of skin,
our embrace has broken their bones to crumbs.
We have eaten their living flesh and sold their
teeth to the streets and the gutters. We have
broken our vows beyond gold-threaded
mendings, or the bandaging caress of their hair.

Lustrous cloisters, enamel and ivory, the
women of time in the catacombs spinning,
their fingers like spindles and hair like
the moonlight. They’re warping and wefting
and weaving out destiny, giving our threads
weight, motion and consequence. We aren’t
really real until they have entangled us.

The goddesses rising, always and always.
The maiden/dame/crone, the virgin/ghoul
/succubus, beyond all our bargaining,
our great spire of ego, they rise up and
shield us from the light of our stars.

Maiden mother warrior hag, teacher lover
breaker builder: Moon, Earth, Sun and Sky
together, women weaving, binding, lifting,
goddesses they rise.

-Vayl L Larkin 11/25