Friday Fiction: Guest Star Poet

 SISTERS

 

Sisters,

You stand together for the last time,

Long life strewn through tough old arms,

Firmness of years pinned up tight in a bun.

Flowered hats you wear,

Long dresses, Sunday clothes,

This is a special occasion.

In your eyes there lie

Reflections of time, fires and rivers,

Smiles, tears,

The births of babies, deaths,

Family, friends, land.

You always had each other’s hand

To hold and see you through.

Those old eyes

Filled graves and kissed babes,

Laughed at marriages

And cried to see the children leave,

And to see time weave its hands through all.

Warm now like sunlight on your faces it glows,

Proud, wise, loving.

You stand now, facing the sun,

Stillness of time like a lazy river

Froze for a moment,

Allowing you to take hands again

For the last time all three:

The laughing girls who

Helped Mama put up pickles

And Daddy pick cotton.

Standing together,

Staring in silence,

The warmth of togetherness,

The smell of fresh best clothes,

The knowledge of the end;

Time's an old friend,

And to meet it,

Like life,

You do it together.

Looking over the distant hills you plainly see

The haziness of infinity.

 

--John Babel, 1983

Even when he was 17, I always thought (and still think) that John is a better poet than me. Perhaps it's his familiariy with song lyrics that allows him to weave such words together. He found an old batch of photographs at Yesterday's Warehouse back in the day, ancient and eccentric family pictures of a vanished time and a forgotten  family. Some of them went on to illustrate the Arena, the school magazine, that year. One was of three elderly sisters dressed in black Sunday best, who looked like rural Victorian Norns. These photos I found online only vaguely appoximate it. Anyway, that photo helped inspired this poem.