Kate

by Holly Lisle
All Rights Reserved

Do not assume her, neither heart nor soul.
She is not ours—perhaps is not her own—
she’s ancient far beyond imagining
and from strange lands and distant waters grown.
Born once of pain and purified by loss
and scarred by grief and tempered now by fire;
she is a blade of metal purged of dross
and wielded by naught but her own desire.
Do not assume her; her way is not ours.
Hers is a path with homes in heaven and hell,

and she will do as she must do. But still
remember that gods forge their weapons well.

from In the Rift: Glenraven II, Copyright © 1998

Kate appeared in In the Rift: Glenraven II. This, unlike most of my poems, I actually wrote with the character and the story in mind. I used the sonnet format because, first, I love the structure and the rhythm of sonnets and, second, because the sonnet seemed to me to fit the character who in the story recited it extempore. The last line in it stirred something in me so compelling that I borrowed it in a slightly revised version and gave it to Vincalis the Agitator in Diplomacy of Wolves. Ahhh, the cross-pollination of books …

SHORT FICTION & POETRY SUBMENU


Another world is mine that none else see (poem) | Armor-ella (complete short story) | Bad Bottle (complete short story) | Kate (poem) | Life, Well Lived, Will Weep (poem) | Light Through Fog (first chapter) | One View from Shadow (poem) | Pensive Ruminations on Impermanence in a Technophilic World (poem) | Perfect Word (poem) | Promise to the Fallen | Rewind (first chapter) | Strange Arrivals (first story) | The Lovely Man, the Mysterious Box, and Marge (complete story) | To An Android Lover (poem) | To Futz Around with Metric Beat and Time; or, Would We All Be Hacks To Shakespeare? (poem)

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