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.
