Sunday On the Dock at Poros
I carry the old gods with me, Zeus in my pocket,
Athena in my head. Blessed by ancient rite
transmuted into modern ritual, I prepare
to cast a thousand wishes, to squint into life
the ships that launched to save an old king’s honour.
Round my neck a silvered cross, sun-blessed,
lies warm against my skin, offering redemption,
while up the hill, the clock tower rises
white and phallic, a modern Poseidon,
claiming hegemony above the harbour, too far
from his plundered temple to reap an offering
or cast a trident true and spear the fish that skim
the morning sea. Fins sharp as prows carve
foam from the ferry’s trail, their scaled skins
reminders of the layered faith long gone.
A breeze stirs the calm water, whispering
epistolic messages of a triune God sacrificed
for an orthodox creed. Confounded by faith,
I imagine Helen’s face that stoked a war,
Achilles’ song immortalizing a warrior’s wily grace.
Above the air of salt and pine a new God reigns,
the stones of the sea god’s site repurposed,
the fish that engraved the ancient tales
now talismen of a different faith.
The Story Witch
Family legend swears the women in my line can hear
the tales escape from the embers, can read the omens
hidden in the sizzle and blush of branches laid bare
to the will of burning. Tonight, I think they’re right.
I sit by the fire pit in faded jeans, beer in one hand,
kindling in the other, and stare into flame that speaks
in bladed tongues of the wood’s past glory, how she,
this tree, now hewn, once grew through the under-
story toward a kindred lichened trunk, rooted herself
in a sacred grove on land too far away to spy
from this chair in this yard. The night leans in, eager
to stir the heat. One log cracks, settles with a sigh.
More stories erupt among the ash of dead
limbs, Joan of Arc and Sarah Good. Trees
share long memories, hiss the names of women
burned in the madness of hysteria and fear.
I hold my hand above the heat, imagine the sear
of parchment skin, the blisters rising on welted
flesh while story witches writhe, and the wind
tosses errant sparks into the throat of night.
Winter Reverie
I
I wake to the dog barking
in the yard next door, each yap
echoed by a single honk
that spills over the dam
of dreams built by my beaver
mind. Huddled beneath blue
quilts, I count the intervals
between each plaintive call: first,
a plea for help, next a cry of pain.
The third transmits a warning.
Peering through the shoaled
darkness, I chant all is calm,
while the pond, a layer
of greys and mystery
performs an alchemical dance
shifts liquid to ice, beckons
me to join the fowl chorus.
I decline the invitation,
aware of the trickster night-
mare hiding in down-soft
feathers and winged fantasies.
Beyond, the prairie lies in darkness.
Dawn breaks the dream. I yawn
my way back to the window,
spot that silly goose, still
stuck in the frozen plane
her lament all spent, her vigil
unattended but for my image
lonely in the glass, captive
of my own failure to read the sky.
Premonition
At dawn, a clamorous murder
of crows swoops low, spattering
black feathers over the fresh snow
hiding the rosebush you planted
before you left. We could never
be just friends, you said. The cat, sly,
leaves a whisker on the pillow
where you slept. Noon, and the sun
seeks shelter from the storm as clouds weave
runes to mark the passing, cryptic
rhymes among dense flurries of guilt
and remorse, not mine, but still it bites.
At dusk, the wind flings a thorny shawl
of comfort over the leafless willow
and I, not yet officially advised,
keen your loss, abandoned, alone.
Lunatic Times
Dusk, at the edge of autumn,
settles in, an undertow
of sadness beneath the hum
of insect yearning. Crows
gather. A flow of orange smears
the lowering sun, clouds
rise in stratified tiers,
and hummingbirds, loud,
quarrel above the cicada thrum,
competing for drinking rights.
A hemisphere away the lungs
of the world burn day and night.
Asthmatic upheaval. Cremated lucre.
We barter away our lifetime trust
For one more dead acre
And a mouthful of dust.
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