I found their images engraved on a tiny seal
Facing a deity, they stood in a row
Did they ever live in the ‘Mound of the Dead’?
We do not know.
Perhaps, a dream of an ancient scribe
In a later life and in another place
With colors radiating from the seven planets
He painted their avatars
Mounted on the wall of a locked room
In the dark abandoned castle, their faces glowed
It took a poet to collect them from distant kingdoms
He made them seven queens of a single kingdom
Faded on the seal, sculpted as mothers,
In different times they appear differently
As queens and fairies
As fisherwomen and potters’ daughters
As widows, burnt on the funeral pyres
Scribbled in the ashes may be their story
Writ large is their matriarchy
Prevailed in the ancient past
Preserved in old tales
( Click here to see the story this poem was inspired by. )
