They collect at the crossroads at dusk –or is it

dawn? – all the colors of their skin and clothes

(mocha and mist, morning and midnight), mingling

with all the colors of the day drizzling away – or is

it swizzling awake? — the sun behind them, bedding

down — or blinking open — orange like a cat’s eye,

like a red samurai in a providence sky, and these three

sisters stand before this sibylline sun, or under this

mantic moon, while tears stream like moire ribbons

from its surface, like tear-off to-do lists, like hotlines to

call if you have seen me, have met me, have known me,

They’re gathering numbers. They’ve

got yours already, and mine, clutched and bunched in their

skirts, their taffeta pleated pockets, silk threads to weave

windfalls or is it pitfalls? lunar – no solar – eclipses, feasts,

make that famines, all endlessly unleashed at the pull of

an umbilical, umbrellical handle in the sky,. The hands of fate — they make it rain.