influence

Aneesa Davenport

Saturnia, they say, grieved more deeply than she should and than the issue warranted.
–Ovid, tr. Frank Justus Miller

Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart. –Yeats

These warnings reached me too late.
The season has been spent.
The stars have swayed me to and fro
while I have watched,
speechless and seasick,
and thought how ugly my tears,
how much a stranger
the inside of my body is to the outside.

Jove maintained that Juno,
daughter of Saturn,
suffered from an excess of emotion,
whether happiness or other,
but he didn't use the word "suffer."

Juno, I imagine, felt differently.
She is lifting rocks
with a hand gone numb,
wondering what she has to do with the hand,
what the hand has to do with the rock,
turning it in her palm,
wondering if that's really a rock or not.