Selena

“Selena’s moon rays fall upon sleeping mortals, and her kisses fell upon her love, Endymion.” Encyclopedia Mythica

We are ghost-daughters gathering sea roses and heather for the funeral pyre.

We have come from her bedside, left her statuary, bed-clothes tucked under her chin, face up, dead.

Fog spills over pale dunes slumped over the beach. We step into the night onto wet sand.

The sky opens up to make a place for her among the stars. Her reflection, orange and unafraid, rides Endymion waves lapping sea oats, receding at her will.

Has she found us here in the hush where water sips at stones deaf to our grief?

Tonight the moon takes back the waters, an old story writing itself. Where will it end? She reminds us we are the keepers of each others’ secrets

and hers -– sadness too great to hold, jealousy thinned by time.

We stack beach stones, the cairn casts a shadow in her light -–sister, brother, father stone by stone.

Clouds feather the horizon. I’ve lost count of who is living and who is dead, who was born and who returns to ignite the fire.

Alida Woods