Greying Eyes

No breeze

no sound

No warmth or chill.  Just there.

Odysseus’ unsleeping eyes ceased to be closed

 and stared out at the moon.

Fair Ithaca, rocky Ithaca, lay beneath the window

Silent as much from trauma

as from peaceful slumber.

After twenty years and a dozen ports of blood

the son of Laertes had entertained

the hope

that he would have been spared one last.

But the final payment for the journey had to be made in kind.

The last stone of the warrior’s road rubbed intimately

against the doorstep to his vaulted banquet hall.

And the full price of wisdom would come due.

Even now, he sensed Telemachos

standing beside him,

His entire being trembling.

Unwilling to longer stand

 abreast of his father;

Unable to leave his presence.

Odysseus himself had felt the sudden fear

Of losing himself in Telemachos’ eyes.

He had not seen this hall in twenty years

And now to see his younger self

 covered in blood –

Breathing, panting, pumping his body full of air

in the barely successful attempt

to swallow all the fear

of who

he had

for a moment

become.

In his mind's eye,

he saw a flash of serrated sunlight

still echoing

from the Trojan battlement

on that certain day.

Telemachos tried to stand as he always imagined

 his father would stand

But with each glance at the dried face,

He careened forward twenty years

 and quaked at the death he saw ahead.

Without imposing on his fragile equilibrium,

Odysseus pulled alongside

 slowing enough to say,

“Have courage, Telemachos.

My path will not be yours.”

Then gray-eyed, steadfast, sure-handed Odysseus

reached down with a single hand

to hoist a suitor onto one of the burial pallets.

And thoughtful Telemachos, now gray-eyed Telemachos

 found himself on his knees

and did not arise

until there was nothing to be freed of

in his eyes or in his gut.

But all this blood and bile had been loosed seven days before.

Now Telemachos still crept about in his chambers.

too tired to stir during the day;

too quickly aged to sleep in the dark.

Now Odysseus lay in his bed

beside virtuous, faithful and resourceful Penelope.

Now Penelope lay still,

her breath a study in slow rhythm

learned from years of deceiving

faithless servants that she slept

Long enough for the ruse to send them off

While she unwove Laertes’ burial shroud.

Without touching him, she could not know

if he had brought himself back an animal;

And without knowing,

 she could not touch him.

Wise, resourceful Odysseus lay unrested.

Circe and Polyphemus;

Scylla and Charybdis;

The Lotus Eaters themselves

were no more dangerous

 than his own fear

 that he had returned

to a life he could only see through a window,

to a land that held only the translucent ghosts of joy.

Now Pallas Athena

 who led him through such blood

Peers across his slate windowsill

 and whispers a child's stories.

While Laertes yet lives,

 there still is hope for his son:

To become in part a small boy

 and grow again

 beyond his new scars.