The Wine-Dark Sea
A sea wife,
my mother didn’t have time
to pace a widow’s walk,
searching for a sail on the horizon.
She was too busy
pinning up sheets to dry,
weeding the garden,
kneading floury bread dough,
wrangling four children.
No suitors to fend off.
No weaving to unpick.
She knitted argyle socks
for her Odysseus.
After a shift at the cannery
she sat up late tapping
on the old Remington
the songs she’d written
in her head while sorting
green beans for Del Monte.
Did she ever wonder
if a Circe waited
at some exotic port,
if he ever answered a siren’s call?
For nearly twenty years,
she heard the Trojan stories,
every pub crawl and brawl
from Ithaca to Yokohama retold.
When he retired from a life at sea,
to his pipe, his dog, his guns,
his wife and children,
to reclaim his throne-like chair,
her once-familiar stranger
brought home the war.
The Weighing of the Heart
When my heart is placed
on the scales
against Ma’at’s feather—
or perhaps a quill,
when I no longer have eyes to see,
no breath to hold
waiting for the judgment,
will Anubis standing by,
press his thumb on the tray
where my heart lies,
lift it out and toss it
to the crocodile-headed goddess
who will snap up the tender morsel
in her jaws?
Or will I be handed back
the boarding pass of my heart
along with all I’ll ever need
pulled behind me
like wheeled luggage,
every canopic jar ringing
a harmonic at the gateway
to the After Life?