I feel like I'm finally jumping into something totally new, starting a fresh chapter for myself. Or at least turning this page, finally. I'm ready for summer and all the adventures it will throw my way; I'm ready for my upcoming trip to visit amazing friends in far places; I'm ready for the first day of work when I'll assuredly get lost on the subway and end up sprinting down Lexington; I'm ready to devote my time and energy to my reading list and family gatherings and deepening friendships.
As such, I think this will be my last post about Daphne and Apollo, for now.
On the first day of this semester, my Ovid professor asked us to think about what figure from Greek mythology we'd pray to. At the time I said Themis, the blindfolded goddess of justice, meting out the yin with the yang and ensuring that karma finds its way back around.
On the final day of "class," I had the unbelievable pleasure of reading and writing poetry with Eleanor Wilner, an American poet who is too fabulous for words. Her intensely introspective and insightful presence reminds me of my favorite high school English teacher, and her knowledge of Greek myth is as impressive as it is deeply personal for her.
She asked who I'd pray to these days. I chose a bird in a nearby tree or flying overhead as Daphne become the Laurel Tree. I feel like I finally understand Daphne and what she does through her transformation, why she resists Phoebus, her nod in consent following her metamorphosis. And I feel like a bystander who has watched this process unfold before her.
I read this poem aloud to Eleanor Wilner, and a fantastic conversation ensued. What does it mean, to be someone's memorial, a memory, something that can be possessed? Is it inevitable, as psychology tells us, that we first aim to destroy that which we ultimately love and hold most dear? She delighted in the voice of my poem's speaker and the simultaneous self-irony and honesty I've evoked. Well, we'll see about that. Haha. Enjoy!
From the Back Row of a Poetry Reading
Around her hair—
in
disarray—she wears a simple band.
…He looks at Daphne’s hair
as,
unadorned, it hangs down her fair neck,
and
says: ‘Just think, if she should comb her locks!’
--Apollo & Daphne
This morning I got on my knees and prayed
and asked God to ask you to stop
sending me letters in Greek, and to remind
the postman always to arrive right on time.
Am I
supposed to be kneeling? Am I
allowed
to look up? I figured the Big Guy
would forgive a first-timer.
For eras I stared at my bedcover, woven
by the furrowed fingers of my grandmother
who knows the paternoster, but I suffered
worshipper’s block and simply cried,
squeezed out gold-flecked water-worlds,
and I let them trill through purpled air
bloated with what-ifs and alibis and
quarter-notes from my radio, which
I’d forgotten in my sudden burst
of religiosity to mute.
He rode
all the way to Texas, Dolly
reminds me in her reassuring twang.
But our Nissan broke down in Dallas,
remember? And my sheets are still
damp from my calling out for you
through the ether Plato once parsed
near a shore licked by foam-capped tides
exhaling Love, sister of Fury soaked in crimson,
birthed from a cutting feud that haunts the seas,
floating heroes to their fates, gods to their lusts,
and now you to me. Ovid tells us
that the world is born from moist heat,
nature’s dissonant symphony, and it seems
God got it right too, because I could build a castle
in the shape of a beach house in Delaware
out of my prayers to you.
And in that house is a floppy-haired
classicist who insisted on wearing my hairtie
on his wrist to feel longing’s relentless snap,
and you so delighted in my flowing locks
when I sprouted evergreen needles and let my name
become flora, ideal turned sepulcher, for now
you can recline in my shade, read with your lips
the Braille of my bark, feel my form in silhouettes
from your sunbeams, and that, my love,
is why I shook my crown, let my twigs quiver
in consent, my own canto of arbor ero.
Because I know I’m still running
and my river is destined for an ocean
neutrinos can’t touch with wreathes of victory.
But for you I am emerald, and I will
shelter your porch in Maine whenever you call.
Happy Summer, friends. Off we go to write our own endings.
L
No comments:
Post a Comment