A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry

Sister Lost

227 As It Was Written Sister Lost Lois Holub I. Eve Tracking Lilith There are times I need to go down the path alone. Without him. Without the words of naming falling from his lips like seeds filling my ears so that is all I hear. This is the way: To wake before his dreams release him, start down the path in the wet of new morning. Like a ring of water I widen my circle each time I wander. I am certain now there is someone else. Someone whose footprints fit mine but are not mine. I know where I have and have not been and I find the signs of her— the smell, the sounds of her— that linger just inside each place I did not go before. Today I shall pass through the stillness, let the shadow of her steps become my own. My hands are full with the need to reach across the truth for her. I want to see her, and I am afraid of nothing but the silence where her name belongs. 228 A Face to Meet the Faces II. Lilith to Eve Oh yes my sister, I have watched your wanderings through this place called Garden. I am here, unseen but sensed, unbounded by shall nots, and certainly, my dear one, unnamed by him. I feel your life as you cannot, the life taken from you with promises of sweet beginnings and savage threats of suffering. You are tracking the mirror that knows your own name, that knows your own body, a landscape that rolls rich and fertile down to the sea. I have seen you, sister, and have ached for the caution of your heart’s pulse strong enough for life but not for passion. A heart afraid to bite its fruit of fullness, afraid his sword will spring forth to destroy. You have yet to learn that what shall be destroyed is not your self but his lies. I know I must approach you and I know the way it will be told: The serpent, the tree, and the fruit, the curses and exile, as if snake is not sacred as if tree is not friend as if apple is not gift and as if you, my sister, are not power of birth, death and life everturning at home anywhere you squat to bleed, with eyes to see through death’s slave dressed as Angel, 229 As It Was Written with body to ignite his soul in grief for what he has lost, with voice to name yourself and hands to fling wide the gate on your way out. ...