The Moirai's Message

The Moirai's Message

There is a moment between now and then,
not quite asleep or awake. It's a place
where time has no hold, no answer to "when."
"Where" has no meaning in such a strange space.

I'd been contemplating the vagaries
of life as I traveled each twist and turn.
Was it all random or meant to appease
some debt to a god I could not discern?

As I drifted off, I felt myself fall,
pushed by an unseen and tenuous hand.
There, in the darkness, I heard a faint call.
"Follow my voice, child," it seemed to command.

Light slowly appeared and I gazed in awe;
all of creation was a tapestry,
woven from lifetimes, without a flaw,
stretching as far as my eyes could see.

Three women in white sat weaving the thread,
working in unison, hard at their task.
Singing a song of the living and dead,
they beckoned me forward before I could ask.

Though no words were uttered, they spoke to me,
their hands never stopping or faltering,
creating their art for all eternity,
their purpose unswerving and unaltering.

Clothos, the spinner, creates the new thread,
formed from the dreams and the fears of mankind.
Her spindle revolving between hope and dread,
she balances each as she makes them entwined.

Lachesis, the allotter, draws out each strand.
Her measuring rod sets our destiny,
weaving the highs and lows we'll withstand
in patterns of increasing complexity.

The last of the three sat somewhat aside.
She watched the design – how each strand would wend,
gauging the whole so that she could decide
precisely where each thread needed to end.

Atropos, the cutter, wielded her shears
and trimmed each thread neatly, for such was her art,
without compassion or wailing or tears
for she was the ending, the others the start.

"Child, can you see now? Can you understand
that all time and space has a place in the weave?
No thread is random; each has been planned.
The Moirai are blessed for it's we who perceive."

I felt them surround me, a gentle embrace,
and once more I fell into sleep's dark abyss.
I woke in the morning, the sun on my face
caressing me softly like a mother's kiss.

The images replayed within my head.
"Twas no more than a dream I had last night!"
until I saw a glimmer on the bed.
A thread of light and dark gleamed in the light.

A entry for "The Lair Contest (Mythical Creatures)" 
Prompt: The Fates ~ Three mythical goddesses who were said to control the fates of men. In Greek, they were known as the Moirai. The three are portrayed as spinners, each with a different tasks - threading the spindle, measuring the thread and cutting the thread (birth, life, death). They decide, shortly after birth (three to nine days, depending on the myth) a person's lifespan and how/when he will die, and this can never be changed.
Line Limit: Minimum 30
Line Count: 52

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