Wiley Odysseus,
I spent twenty years waiting for you.
You were gone so long,
I began to define myself
by your absence.
I watched our son grow up
without you, his clear gray eyes
keeping you in my mind
long after I had forgotten
what you looked like
and why I was waiting for you.
I look up from my weaving
and after twenty years,
you stand there, the king returns
and I instantly shrink
from law-giving Queen
to law-receiving wife.
I cannot hide the wrinkles
or how shouldering your responsibilities
prematurely curved my shoulders.
Silver tongued Odysseus,
Telemachus follows your every move
with shining eyes.
Twenty years care and love,
insignificant, dissipated,
by a rusty suit of armor,
a broken sword and a kindred swagger.
He will sit at your feet
soaking up exploits
like a sponge fallen into a wine cask.
My Lord,
I know you are clever, because you told me.
I know you are brave, because you told me.
I have always believed everything you've told me.
Out of curiosity,
in twenty years did you ever
stop and consider me?
I search deep into my heart
to find the welcome you crave.
I turn back to my weaving
searching the warp and weft
for a pattern, a foundation
I can use to build from this moment
but all I can see
is the unfinished portion.
I am so used to defining myself
by your absence, now that you are here
I don't know who I am.
King of Ithaca,
While you were besieging Ilium,
the well became fouled
and I superintended the digging of a new one.
While you listened to the siren's song,
I had to listen to serpent tongued suitors
saying I was too beautiful
and Ithaka too valuable
to waste my life waiting.
While you lay in Circe's arms,
my hair turned gray,
my breasts sagged,
hair grew under my chin and
I slept alone.
Old man,
Poets will compose paeans
to your cleverness and bravery
and write lyrical ballads
praising Helen's beauty.
All my life I have been second
to Leda's golden-haired daughter.
I knew I was your consolation prize
when Menelaus carried Helen
home to Sparta
and when Paris carried her off to Ilium.
Poets will praise my faithfulness
as a footnote to her story
but they will never tell
the dark thoughts
that rage in my mind
like winter on this Ithakan rock.
If Paris had whispered words of love
into my ears, I would have followed
the white-hot breath of his passion
to Priam's palace
and if you had come home
when the war ended,
twenty years ago, when I was strong,
Clytemnestra wouldn't have been
the only wife
to keep an ax
behind the bathroom door.
First published in the Maine Review, 1994
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