Tale of the Crone Goddess

By Bruce Boston

I took this honor within my breast.
I forgot the boots of my father. I
forgot my mother's eyes, her words
of entreaty. Atop the wagon, swaying
to the music of hooves and wheels,
I kept the torch and my hands and
thoughts did not waver in their task.

The small, dirty boys came to me,
running within the rutted tracks,
tossing rings for my attention.
Women with other lives and lovers
walked below as I saw their bellies
swell in turn, spilling the bloody living
fruit, throats taut with the birthpang,
dull hairs sprouting about their lips.
Forests passed. Rivers forded. The night
a spinning cape, the torch blown fat
or lean. The dark hairs curling from the
slits on the wagonmaster's gloves, the
roughness in his touch I learned to
tame and covet with my clever limbs.

Still my eyes did not waver, to stare
through sunache, the flail of rain,
the softly-hissing snow, to gather
the leaves and strip the bark and
draw forth the oil to feed the flame,
for I was chosen, a goddess no longer
human, my white feet, my body pure
and sacred as the torch itself.

Until the years turned hard. And hard
as I tried I could not yearn them back.
Strands of gray stained my dark braids.
My vision dimmed. Wrinkles found my neck,
my shoulders. I cried in the night and
my voice grew ragged as the milkweed leaf.

Now the wagons are still.
The master visits no longer.
The torch flickers within my breast.
And in the night there are rumors
of a girl come to the caravan.

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