STONE

STONE

they support life,
are Goldilocks planets
like our own

scattered through space
and you can find them
like the islands Odysseus
hopped
from, one to ths other, on his journey back from Troy
to his beloved Ithaca from.the arms of Circe and

Calypso to damn-near the
intestines of Polyphemus, the Cyclops into his grear marital bed hewn from a tree to be with his loyal

wife Penelope waiting for him
all those years

which analogy ends for me
befpre ig has begun

no parallels for me in
this seminal, archetypal tale
not even in
James Joyce, or in
the Stanley Kubrick versions

but my sensibility remains
Homeric, Greek,
strangely Pagan

as i somehow find myself
before Medusa, the Gorgon
feeling my
brain atrophy, everything
I am, or thought I was,
hardening, petrifying,
turning
to stone

Medusa, twisted punished
serpemt coiffured demi-
goddess
who could turn the great
gas giant of our system
into a pebble into
a statue
to Zeus

this planet of rock becoming
more rock
submerged rock
and we all waiting wondering,

mesmerized, as if in Medusa’s
snake-like
laser-scoped toxic
vision and like her victims knowing

inescapable transformation has begun

Odysseus sailing the seas
chased by Poseidon
ruler over all
the waters

fish-teeming, such waters can
be walked across I belive
by ultimate
creatures, beings of
redemption

maybe now I am stone
Medusa’s stonethey could use me,

deploy me as a tablet
upon which
to write these things

as they look for Goldilocks planets
look for Ithaca

find us
and our home

i