Goddesses, by Britta Benson

Photo by Julie Krabbe Clausen on Pexels.com

Here’s my response to Brian Vos’s Weekly Poetry Prompt. This week, it’s ‘Fate or Free Will’. Here’s the link to the prompt, in case you are interested: https://brianvos.com/2022/05/06/fate-or-freewill-your-weekly-poetry-prompt/

As per usual, I went a little off piste. I immediately thought of the three Fates, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, in Greek Mythology. This is what I came up with:

Goddesses

I always imagine them my age.

Now, menopausal women,

the three spinsters share home, hearth,

their hands restless, arthritic,

the work constant, painful,

especially for Clotho,

spinning all day for the future of humanity.

Why?

This job never lived up to her father’s description,

never will come to an end.

Her back bent and sore from sitting for centuries,

her eyesight fading, perhaps her only comfort.

Her sister Lachesis only does as she is told.

She used to grin, as she allotted Clotho’s thread,

told jokes for her own amusement.

Her face, now rigid, half frozen, half melted,

doesn’t tell stories any more.

She measures out lifelines,

gifts moments of death.

The third sister, Atropos,

never fully understood why she was made

to cut.

Never questioned the inevitable.

Her heart, inflexible, never needed a stretch.

Decision makers

or merely cheap labour,

executing Zeus’ will?

Fate doesn’t age well.

There’s a lot of waiting involved in prophecies.

Thy will be done?

Count me out.