Poetry: Circe Waits For Nobody

Circe I
Circe I flickr photo by A . shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license

This is another in a series of longer poems I am working on this summer (along with shorter daily poems), trying to stretch my writing with purposeful revision, and taking my time with the writing. The prompt via NWPStudio for this one was about a mythical creature during household chores (or some variation of that), and I thought of Circe, battling time as she waits for the return of Odysseus.

Circe Waits For Nobody

Circe shakes sand from inside the shack,
wrestling the rugs with a frustrated snap,
cackling songs with a maniacal laugh,
but he’s not coming back

The Four Winds know but refused to say
what pulls at the sky, what shifts it away,
what shimmers the ground, day after day,
while he refuses to stay

She scrubs every window in order to see
linear lines dancing at the seams,
sailing the waters of ancient dreams;
And still, he takes leave

Circe sighs, sparks a fire for light,
loosens the knots that held him tight,
whispering spells to an enveloping night;
gone to wind, like a kite

And so she is, pining for past, year after year,
Circe waits, watching, for sails to appear
but time has a way of deadening fear:
Nobody’s presence, a ghost from tears

Peace (and poems),
Kevin

One Comment
  1. Image is nicely done: a ghost from tears. It begs the clear question–what inspired the tears? I like poetry that takes its own inner logic seriously.

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