Hephaestus
Never one to miss a museum free day,
I swallow a pain pill
along with my pride
and bring a cane
to limp through the galleries.
Soon my lame leg has
had enough; needing rest.
Looking up, I find myself
befallen, a seated supplicant
at the feet of Uncle Poseidon,
his bronze image a masterpiece
of strength towering over me.
Humbled, I hobble to Gallery 23,
the grave stele gallery.
Before me, five seated women,
stare out from their grave markers
their faces carved in sorrow.
They’ve been sad for centuries
because they are dead.
Leaning on my cane, I stare back,
mourning my lame leg.
Walking Beside the Souls of Emperors
Roaming the ancient site
of the Eleusinian Mysteries,
the destination of peripatetic adherents
who would journey along the Sacred Way
to partake of the cult’s mysteries.
Where Augustus, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius
came to be initiated.
Where there’s a portal to Hades.
Today I’m flanked on both sides
by myriad white butterflies—
butterflies, ancient sign of souls,
set free for a day from nearby Hell Gate,
granted a furlough by Queen Persephone.
Surrounded by so many souls,
some lasting forever in fame,
others the spirits of slaves,
they flit and dance and frolic,
ecstatic on their free day.
And walking among these happy souls,
makes me wonder if they’re
the special ones, on a special day,
reserved for the cult’s initiates,
roaming the site of their devotional past,
granted a boon of liberty.
Eyes of Light
Stranger—wilt thou follow now,
And sit with me on Acro-Corinth’s brow?
—Byron, The Siege of Corinth
According to Plotinus an eye
would be blind from the sun
if it were not a sun itself,
so for the lookouts
atop the monolith of Acrocorinth,
two thousand feet high,
the rays from their gaze
are like beams from the sun.
Sentries through the centuries—
Greeks, Romans, Byzantines,
Franks, Venetians, Turks—
shine their ancient eyes
on the eternal tides
of the two bays below
that course the seascape
like time’s ebb and flow.
Delphic Doppler
It’s best to do it at twilight
when evening shadows foreshadow augury;
to sit by the Oracle’s Castalian Spring
next to the Epsilon Omicron 48 roadway
and listen for the Delphic Doppler
amplified by the acoustics
of the Parnassian foothills
when solitary cars pass by.
Listen to the murmur
of the lone car motor cooing
its incubated pitch rising near the Spring,
then fading as it moves onward
together with dusk’s fading light,
disturbing the sacred Delphic silence,
this inchoate prophecy
supplanting the muttering of priestess Pythia.
Magpie Mind
The Hill of the Muses, 500 feet high and
half a mile south of the Athens Acropolis
I’m sitting on Muse Hill alone.
The tourists have left,
walked down the hill
with an indelible memory
of the sun setting over Mount Aigaleo.
and light fading on ships
anchored in the Saronic Gulf.
After sunset, darkness comes quickly.
In the gloaming, halfway
between mountain and sea,
Hephaestus ignites his fire-wheel.
Actually, it’s a Luna Park Ferris wheel.
Its lights mesmerize,
a kaleidoscope of pulsing colors,
moving from the unmoved mover
at the wheel’s mystic center,
out and in and out again,
centrifugal to centripetal,
to the ouroboros circumference
surrounding “the all in one,” spinning
round this ocean of color chaos,
fortune’s wheel rising and falling.
With effort I tear away
from this spellbinding sight
and walk down the dark hill.
To my right, the Parthenon,
bathed pure white by spotlights,
towering, staid, magnificent,
symbol of wisdom, order and peace,
mocking my magpie attraction
to fleeting bursts of color
from the consort of Aphrodite
offering pleasure and joy.
