Torch-bearing

 

We Goddesses of Shining Light – who do not

claim to be ourselves divinities, only

that we seek to embody, as best we might,

Her good qualities –

have been slowly ageing, over all these years

of meeting and sending out our love as light

to the whole community, and thence the world.

Now we’re old and few.

We no longer dance in circle when we meet,

nor sing to Her, but still we breathe in, breathe out

a flood of light, which first we see as a star

and then as our torch

beaming wherever needed. We have become

a small circle of elders, the grandmothers

who, someone on facebook said, are needed now.

Well then, here we are!

How will you use us, world, before we leave you?

That is not ours to know or even to ask.

It is enough that we meet, as do other

small wisdom circles.

The world has no listening for our wisdom.

We are wise enough to understand this fact,

wise enough to know our only task: send light,

continue sending.

This is loosely based on the Sapphic stanza (aka Sapphic ode). I was inspired by Rajani Radhakrishnan's recent use of the form. Named after Greek poet Sappho, this form (in its 'lesser' version) has 38 syllables in four lines in a pattern of 11/11/11/5, which I have followed. However, I have ignored patterns of long and short syllables which are also classically used.

Written for Friday Writings #165 at Poets and Storytellers United, in which we are asked to use the word 'torch' in a piece of writing.