Eight poems from 'Journeywork'

Front Story

Phemios

At the end of the Odyssey, the Iliad

comes back in all its terrible

detail: Odysseus slaughtering

suitors till the floor runs red

as great Scamandros; or 'rutting',

lustful, 'in his rooted bed'.

I didn't want to tell you,

but I have to, since he spared me.

Odysseus on Watch

All night we tacked

against a head

wind. Moon breaking

up on the chop.

Impossible

to say if we

gained ground, they say,

even at sea.

I thought about

your hands, passing

the shuttle back

and forth: tacking.

Against what? O-

ther head winds, I

supposed. I won-

dered what you'd make

of our boustro-

phedonic pro-

gress, what if a-

nything did I.

Penelope Dreams of Geese

After a storm the ocean gathers 

up its broken waves. A lifeguard, 

my vocation is to save 

lives. But no life is saved, 

though my seat is made of olive wood 

well seasoned and the timbers square, 

the uprights plumb, the horizontals level.

Far inland where a grove of trees

affords good shelter from the wind,

the censure of the Ithacans, 

I pledged myself to Aphrodite,

goddess of love and voyages,

she who lets you save one life

at the expense of all the others.

Last night I dreamed a quick brown fox

had tunnelled under the courtyard wall

and one by one slain all my geese:

the white ones with their craning beaks;

the mottled, knobbly-headed one;

the little one who always followed

along behind; the masked one, and her mate.

Wayfarer

At Ithaca

my waves begin,

who juggle sand,

who gather in

the wrack of land

and cast it up

upon the sea.

This is no common

tapestry.

I weave them gold

and green and grey

to the horizon

where they break.

I ravel in

the shuttle's wake.

And each day's labour's

lost, they say.

They do not see

how, slowly, the

horizon line

is worn away.

Some even tide

the night will fail

(it is but weft)

and day reveal

my landfall: as

you know, your sail.

Islands

It was only after we had been

at sea for many days without

a sign of shore (unfriendly winds

had blown us far off course and we

despaired of finding Ithaca)

that I began to have the dream

of islands.

Waking — or I thought I woke —

I found myself at the centre of

an island large enough the sound

of breakers didn't penetrate

to where I stood. As if once more

bound fast to the mainmast of my ship,

I listened.

I heard the south wind thrashing in

the branches of an olive tree;

the duff resettling where a snake

withdrew itself; a bird repeating

one high note (though whether to chide

his foes or warn his mate, I couldn't

tell you) —

but all these sounds, without the sea,

a recitation without the lyre,

afforded me, at last, no clew:

no sense of where to turn my feet

to find my way back to the coast —

that is to say, to you. I might

be dreaming:

no sooner did this thought occur,

than I woke again — or thought I woke —

and found myself again at the heart

of another island like the first.

Again I found myself restrained

by indecision, hawser-strong,

and woke

again, to the heart of another island.

Penelope, I could relate

no end of this: all night I woke,

to island after island each one

blossoming within the last

like rings around a boat at rest.

But dawn

did come. I woke indeed. I found

myself in my hollow ship. I almost

wept with joy to see the sea.

You Are So Strange

You are so strange, you said. I thought you meant

the years had been unkind — and yes, I bridled

at that statement, thinking: time and tide

will do that to a person. If you've come to count

my grey hairs you can set your sail

right now and ask your goddess for a following

wind to take you back to Circe's island,

or evil, not-to-be-mentioned Ilion.

It wasn't until you said the words again

that I detected in them our old ritual,

remembering how mere days could work a change:

weaving and winnowing, tending hive and vine,

we used to plunge ourselves in the habitual

and, surfacing, find each other rich and strange.

Back Story

Cassandra

You let that damned horse in again,

and history begins, again.

The story flashes in the pan:

the ship that launched a thousand men....

The horse will bear, the cock will crow.

The rubes will interrupt the show.

The show goes on, for all we know.

The story goes, I told you so.

(previously published in Canadian Notes & Queries 72 [2007])

All these poems will be published in Groundwork: poems

(Biblioasis, 2011)