THREE SISTERS

The mist was light on the Blue Mountains

in September ’87.

My Dad and I stayed in Katoomba

at the Cecil, its glory reduced  

to creaking stairs and the smell of dust.

He spoke of back pain

and on the short walk

from the Three Sisters to Echo Point,

his unusual puffing and stopping

made me fear

something  seriously wrong.

He died next year at 78. 

Sixteen years later

Florence, his oldest sister, hung on,

blind and emphysematous until

I returned from New York.

In three days she yielded up her spirit.

She had cared for their father,

a minister from England, until his death.

She preached his sermons

when he no longer could.

Then Marjorie in Melbourne, even more devout,

left a manifesto about her anticipation

of heaven, and Janet, bereft by Marjorie’s death,

refused surgery for an obstructed bowel.

At night with visitors at the lookout

at Echo Point, tourists gone,

I see the three sandstone sisters,

ghosts of my aunts illuminated

by the propositions of their faith.

I wonder if in the abyss

that separates their time from mine
truth will one day be found.