Any Moment

Katharine Alys O’Connor

Kate is a senior, majoring in Environmental Biology.  She enjoys the outdoors, horseback riding and writing.  Before she dies she would like to finish Joyce’s Ulysses and try hang gliding.

Eurydice didn’t look quite so lost yesterday

as I passed the sculpture garden on the way to class.

It wasn’t the spring sunlight

filtering through new leaves

to dapple her cold skin.

It wasn’t even that she had ceased

to stretch her arms to the heavens; she hadn’t.

 

Perhaps she simply realized that

at any moment she could choose.

The instant she resumed living,

the illusion of tragedy lifted.

Her hands were raised with joy;

she was free to explore

this new and mysterious country,

to test her courage in the dark passageways of Hades,

and to meet all the souls that had ever been.

 

By the time she might see Orpheus again,

it wouldn’t matter.

 

In the Greek myth, Eurydice was the new bride of Orpheus, a musician of unsurpassed talent. She was bitten by a snake shortly after their marriage and died.  Orpheus went to the Underworld to retrieve her but failed and Eurydice remained among the dead.