Wednesday, June 22, 2022

The Medusa Factor

(This poem was published by Otherwise Engaged journal in 2020)



Do you suppose we all have friendships

that sour as surely as buttermilk;

what was once cream risen to the top

turned?


So it was with us: delight

soured to animus.  And, so, we

lived out our last collegial years,

intense, at odds.


Years piled onto untidy years

since our unraveling— permitting me,

at the mention of her name,

to emit a disinterested yawn.


Then, she died—

younger than the norm.

And I am

confused 

at the whoosh of loss

that flushes my veins.


A sadness seeps in

as I realize a Medusa 

figures as largely in a life story

as any Eros, Pandora or Athena.


                    -Jeanette Willert 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Four Fifteen

Who will volunteer to search yesterday's years for buried slightest traces Of a people born to be weather-torn from their prized and pre...