So, the poem begins with Odysseus on Calypso's island dreaming of his adventures. Each of the following numbered sections are a memory of a different adventure in his odyssey. The final un-numbered section is Odysseus' realization as he wakes up on the island. If you're curious about one of the sections message me & review! Merci beaucoup.
A salty breeze from the sea
ruffles the grass
like a mother's hand,
whispering promises of sun, sleep, and summer.
Faintly,
it calls…
I. She cradles sleeping innocence,
soft, and warm, and breathing, beating,
against her chest.
Soft fuzz, round face, curling lashes,
eyelids of the smoothest porcelain—
A wonder,
yet my eyes are drawn to the smile that tugs her mouth.
II. Sparkling laughter
lights the halls
brighter than any candle,
shadowless and true.
I have found my home,
I will not leave.
III. My neck prickles, warning of their presence
long before I turn the plow,
eyes downcast, head bowed,
weaving side to side,
casting salt to patter like a blight of hail
upon my fields.
Cold air.
Wet feet.
But the gift they lay in my path is too precious
to squander.
IV. More blocks in the wall
than men in our army.
My pulse races.
V. Blood pours sluggishly from the mud,
seeping from the corpses
like blood from an artery.
There are no angels on this battlefield.
VI. We are not known for our horses,
but here is a stallion filled
with all the glory of Greece.
Unfaithful beauty, do you fear its call?
VII. Heady wine sings from my veins,
singing away all memory of the battlefield
but the gold that lines my coffers
and the praise that flies from my comrades' lips.
10 years of battle-what's one more city?
VIII. Wind-swept and weary,
mellow juice and aroma
dissolved their longing for home,
casting their minds to fields of slumber.
Harsh action I took,
yanking their bodies from the lotus plains—
and so their minds followed.
…how peaceful to rest free of worry.
IX. Bitter crew and culpable I
found treasure.
What better to mend the rift between comrades?
-but two days in a cave does little for one's spirit.
I called to the cyclops.
Two days and six men
cost me my crew and ten years.
X. Two bags of wind
gave me a whiff of life—
to be scattered to all corners of the world.
XI. A fresh morning dawned
filled with the promise of xenia.
Giants are no patrons of Zeus.
XII. I am weary of leading a crew
to disaster.
At least this goddess' feasts will do me no harm.
XIII. I met a mother with a heart
filled with the wisdom of all the heroes of Greece.
Without knowing of my journey or the pitfalls I'd found,
she offered me a feast of stories
that filled me with remorse.
What stories do you tell our son?
XIV. The wisdom you sang had no words,
but the regret in your eyes
lingered.
XV. By my hands six men died,
more dear to me than all the corpses at Troy
for the hours we spent
as comrades.
But I will not risk losing my passage home.
XVI. When a lamb roasts in the fire,
does one reach through the flame?
Then why would one eat the cattle of the sun?
XVII. I am not alone on this island,
yet though that beauty breathes,
her lifetime has long gone by.
Mortality, morality, worn away
by the wind, by the sun, by the sea.
Sun soaks my skin
and overflows,
the heavy, cloying scent of boredom
seeping into my memories
to pool them around me.
Not so glorious, or adventurous, or heroic,
when compared to the smiles we could have shared.
Do you watch the same stars I watch now?