Penelope's Thread

     Day after day under the blue block of sky
     the suitors wait for rain.  They know,
     upstairs, she is weaving the clouds--they 
     see the dark breakers roll from the West
     each day, and put on their raincoats, and
     close up the shutters, and play cards.

     In the morning it is always the same--
     dry ground, cracked, the grape
     vines stressed, and the plate for
     the entrails full of charred birds.
     This is no way to predict the weather.

     The thread she is using is exceptionally
     fine--less than the width of a hair--
     so it's not surprising that the men
     never see it--the line that innocently
     starts from her window, that bows not
     at all, and vanishes into the blue.

     It's so simple, she thinks: a flick of
     her finger and the clouds fall apart on 
     the sea.  Yet she, too, is hoping for
     rain.  She's awaited a downpour for
     nineteen years--for the rain to necklace
     her throat, and to walk through the mud in
     her bare feet, alone, except for the bees.

     But the suitors are much more practical.
     They've wheat to ripen and the forage
     for the cattle grows thin.  Of course,
     none would mind bedding that beauty
     whose loom they hear clicking, all day,
     like the tap of a distant woodpecker.

     Late in the evening she comes down-
     stairs and surveys the suitors at rest.
     Some have settled themselves with the
     serving girls, breasts uncovered, linen
     ripped--some men, bare butts in the
     air, appear to be studying the floor.

     She's tempted to pick up a spear
     and do what he would have done
     had he been there.  But a woman's
     revenge must be more prudent than
     man's.  So at night when no one
     is watching, she climbs upstairs,
     tugs the key thread, and imagines
     the distant explosion of droplets
     as everything falls to the sea.


     Tom Moore  (Click for bio.)


      


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