Sisters Then

I do not know
Which one of us
Was older.

I know you were
The stronger-willed,
Impatient to begin
Your time on earth,
While I perhaps, held back
To ponder
All the implications.

I wonder
How we felt,
The two of us,
To learn I would come first
And mother you,
And not the other way.

I would have worshipped you,
Your beauty,
Strength,
And magnetism-
Then withered in your shadow,
Lost among this world's pale satellites
Of matriarchal suns,
My quiet strengths stillborn
For lack of any gentle place
To root themselves.

So now it is for me
To guide toward mortal womanhood
A proud, gregarious soul
Who shone around and over me
In our primeval home,
Where we two sisters,
Bowing to a sage parental plan,
Spoke brief farewells,
And I,
With one last plea for guidance,
Turned away
To walk
Toward my brief childhood
And my rendezvous with yours.