The house is quiet
the baby subdued
and the left-behind-men surly.
They are not used
to obeying a woman.
Tough.
We all see the same sky
from casement,
deck or battlements.
Loneliness is not a word
I feel entitled too
so soon.
His clever eyes
were on the horizon
even as we kissed.
Bill Brookman says:
Lovely poem Eleanor. The Ulysses of my childhood (though a Purnell magazine “Finding Out”) and the Ulysses of my adulthood (through Tennyson) are my constant fellow-travellers whereby I measure myself. Knowing that he died at 50 and finding myself 56 I realise that I have inadequately outlived him.
Penelope. 20 years away from her. I could have done it. – Waited to be back with my idealised vision of her whilst in Troy and on the Odyssey – and yet probably would still have sinned with Calypso as Odysseus did…
July 19, 2011, 9:15 pm