Gardeners and Sailors

Sisters swinging
sharing stories of gardeners and sailors.
Here, in high hammocks, rock Helios and Selene,
Perched upon pendulums
the Horae brushing their hair
while humming mortal laments.
Those verses that skies catch
those etched upon a spinning orb
it releases

little prayers like a gas
adrift from the surface

a broken-clay terrain upon which erected monuments—materials masculated,
strain to reach at the sky
appearing as time pieces to the Horae.

They look onto Helsinki today.

Helios elates herself watching scurrying
the collecting of sassafras.
Little buckets of harvests glint gold in tufts of
dust and bramble.
She traces the sewn lines with her sparkling fingertips
appointing gardener grid-makers to chart her brightness;
to thank her with a hand upon their brow
as they squint at the sky.

She yawns at the long day of work
at the shovels plunged into the cool dirt
to rest upright
and releases herself upon them
outstretching warmth
that cascades in iridescent white gold.

It is love-making when she releases herself to the gardener.

Selene, still looked fixedly to the shores of Helsinki,
admiring the building of little vehicles
along the waters edge.
The Baltic is always in her clutches,
it moves two and fro
to the echoes of her laughter.
She watched her singular ship
let it ride into the darkness
as she poured from a whistling teapot
a silken white strip of light
to guide them.

The more she watched, she began to caress herself
as though her cloud-composed skin
were as the ocean
moving all over her.
Excitement she laughed clamorously
stirring like drift wood thrown through crashing waves.

It got away with her
the pleasure of her movements
and a wave was torn over her coveted ship
with all its crew pointing their faces
at the starry sky like a field of flowers.

She scrambled to part these waves
with her breath
finding only the empty vehicle
bobbing in the waves.

Her wailing remorse now stirs the skies
as dark blue clouds converge over the settling ocean
lean white light no longer draws across the water
and the night becomes very still.

Sisters comfort and recline
seeking respite in the tender embrace of the Horae;
for despite their dominion the day is done
and time goes on and songs are sung:

To touch these mortal lives
the Horae hum,
is to pleasure oneself in fleeting delight.