Week #6—Improv #1

A riff off of Yannis Ritsos’ “Penelope’s Despair”

 (See Week #5—Sign Inventory)

Odysseus’ Dismay

Was this the woman sequestered in his mind’s eye

for the last two decades?

Her glossy long locks drabbed with wisps of gray—

her once bulbous breasts now sunken like abandoned ships

on the reefs of her eroded ribs, her sleepy, gap-toothed smile

a forced apposition to her knitted brow.

Was this the same house they had shared—

where they now warily scored the distance between them?

He gazed at her over the fastidious greens and browns

of her hand-looped rugs, freshly crimsoned

from the imprudent imposters who had fatally presumed him

dead or deadbeat,

scanned her quaint collection of hand-thrown pots and jars

askew in their arched alcoves along the Great Hall,

and marked her wedding gift to him of a bow and quiver

of arrows dangling impotently above the entryway.

And who was that impatient youth standing beside her?

It was difficult, but not impossible, for him to recall

the day he had left her weeping—the vigor of a different

manner of conquest pumping through his veins.

Should he risk explaining everything to her now—

the Sirens? Calypso? and those insidious sea tides
that betrayed time after time?

Perhaps he would wait until after dinner,

until after they had drunk some wine and lain together,

until they had slumbered, until dawn if necessary,

until it all felt familiar again.