When It Breaks -stephanie pope
That shore's too far away I glimpsed it myself-where she says refuge waits. No, here's what I'll do, it's what seems best to me. As long as the timbers cling and joints stand fast I'll hold out aboard her and take a whipping - once the breakers smash my craft to pieces, then I'll swim-no better plan for now. But just as great Odysseus thrashed things out, Poseidon god of the earthquake launched a colossal wave, terrible, murderous, arching over him, pounding down on him, hard as a windstorm blasting piles of dry parched chaff, scattering flying husks--so the long planks of his boat were scattered far and wide. But Odysseus leapt aboard one timber and riding it like a plunging racehorce stripped away his clothes, divine Calypso's gifts, and quickly tying the scarf around his waist he dove headfirst in the sea, stretched his arms and stroked for life itself. - Homer's Odyssey, Book 5: Lines 402-412 Circe's Palace, 1907 Maxfield Parrish |
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| when it breaks and it breaks in the small and the small is deep enough you will go down in the waves of Circe when it sinks and it sinks too deeply you will forget there used to be these waves and remember instead the soft blue things you used to be underneath the care of Circe when it gathers in and separates again the small, fluid softness blue where it rises again and where assailing you sailed by it it will have carried you—carries you now to Ithyca |
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can we be near it and not broken can it be this uncertain and unspoken in foaming leaves us and in leaving leaves us this affixed in unfixed ground Come boat with me on surfaces bubbling creation let us recreate at play in untold depths letting them break in to make our shape souling us home |
| above photo an iunx (eros) waves make by breaking and by breaking grab hold the terrified bit—we sail home upon foam-borne streams of waking divinely tressed and combed and blessed sea-woven soft in bleu largesse—sail home, shall we? to this hearth igniting in our hearts; we will resurface again on fire, blue fire |
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we come home where our blues do this because there used to be a foam-borne wave which isn't anymore it deepened us once when it died still carries in us a certain way (you know...ferry's across) across what will keep on imitating it blue-green and shining here slippery in shining here this way it guides its own interests, too |
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sea-sunk like a treasure of jewels unopened, afloat and without place concave and blue-seeded shows us again in a quiet hour our own way home to Ithyca |
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| for more on Odysseus in America and body as locus of meeting and meaning see the work of Dennis Patrick Slattery the link technique employed is known as bidirectional storying or bi-story. Bi-story is an effective post modern epic storytelling technique employed in longpoem poetry. For more bi-story poetry see A Good Myth in a Long Poem. |
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