The Altar
Odysseus’s final task was to walk
into the wheat, an oar nested on
his shoulder mound as people came
from their houses like schools of curious
minnows. Walk until a farmer, who never
knew the surprise of salt, asked
if he was carrying a winnowing fan.
There, he was to stop, plant the oar
and erect an altar to the god
who had dogged him, clawing
his men one-by-one from his ship
to helix, unwept, in the current.
The oar stuck from the altar
like the arm of a drowning man
as he walked lighter back home
to his newly forged soldier-son
and his wife’s weaving arms.
The altar grew dreams of the ocean
that splashed over the lintels,
sprinkling the sons who woke
crunching the salt foam that tipped
the crests of their desire to follow
the astringent path the stranger left
in the air and made the air stranger there.
They journeyed through forests felled for ships
toward the mouths of smelting ovens,
the bright spin of shields, the netted
haul of blades.
Such willing fodder
following the promise of adventure, the promise
that their churning needs would be sated, husks
blown away on the sea, as they stand, golden
at the prow, shearing through the blue to glory.
Odysseus’s final task was to walk
into the wheat, an oar nested on
his shoulder mound as people came
from their houses like schools of curious
minnows. Walk until a farmer, who never
knew the surprise of salt, asked
if he was carrying a winnowing fan.
There, he was to stop, plant the oar
and erect an altar to the god
who had dogged him, clawing
his men one-by-one from his ship
to helix, unwept, in the current.
The oar stuck from the altar
like the arm of a drowning man
as he walked lighter back home
to his newly forged soldier-son
and his wife’s weaving arms.
The altar grew dreams of the ocean
that splashed over the lintels,
sprinkling the sons who woke
crunching the salt foam that tipped
the crests of their desire to follow
the astringent path the stranger left
in the air and made the air stranger there.
They journeyed through forests felled for ships
toward the mouths of smelting ovens,
the bright spin of shields, the netted
haul of blades.
Such willing fodder
following the promise of adventure, the promise
that their churning needs would be sated, husks
blown away on the sea, as they stand, golden
at the prow, shearing through the blue to glory.