Sonnet to Ithacas
by Katrina Parsey
Love bring your attention to my front door
Wasted is my heart when not with you
On others hard wings, it will never soar
They can not look or touch the way you do
When snow has fallen on barren ground
I retreat to my single flat alone
In Bach and Jazz, hope of life I've found
that I will return to my verdant home
Together we will shield from storms and sorrows
Relaxing with wine in our double room
Dreaming of birth, spring in our tomorrow's
At night, spirited by the silver moon.
Ambition, avarice we have forgone
To spend a simple life where we belong
(C) 2004 Katrina Parsey
Winter Time on Ithaca
by Katrina Parsey
Metronomos,
moulded on this mantelpiece
I dream of our descent
two plum portraits
cossetting
comforting
cuckoos
roasting in redcurrant rapture
(C) 2005 Katrina Parsey
Ithaca
By Katrina Parsey - Inspired by Ken Bones, a regular visitor to Ithaca
My soul is not with me
She is in the salty wine dark sea of cliches
Made for Epic rhymes and rhythms
with little reason or truth; a state controlled story
in which I became the lead
I did not write my own story or even take notes at the time
Papyrus and ink was hard to find
But in all my years of sailing I have never seen a wine dark sea
even though I have drunk barrels of wine from my own vineyards
Wine that deludes the eyes
My soul wanders alone on ancient paths on verdant mountains where Athena still keeps vigil
hunched low in
Lemon Sage,
Smelling of goat shit.
My soul
who is far older than me
sits beneath the olive tree that spread itself like lava on the dressed stones of my palace
Her twisted roots in my storage rooms
I didn’t mind
as long as she still bears me fruit for my oil
and spring leafs for my sickness
She waits for me there
Weeping and weaving
And swimming naked in jade clean water,
I like to think
I cannot go to her
or reach her
Poseidon, Apollo, Zeus are just a bit pissed of with me
and my trickery
My mother told me I was a hedonist
Perhaps she was right
I don’t know I can’t ask her
She died
Struggling to breathe;
The olive leafs didn’t help
Poseidon has a right to be in a storm with me
I killed his son
by poking him in his one eye
But it is a trickier
monster than me, he’ll survive
Gods never die, not like us mere mortals
Gods and monsters
led not by adventure, love, truth or home but greed
The cyclops has a massive belly that can never be fed
and of course with Poseidon and most of the God’s on it’s side
Its babies are mutating in another even bigger cave
I was dragged screaming or was I blind to
trade my soul for progress
In the gallows of a boat
made for me by better humans than me
But who I treated like slaves because they came from Babylon
There is nothing left to do
But sleep
Call to her
My soul
in my dreams
Remembering her beloved Nightingale
The Scopes owls
Who call to each other in Dactylic hexameter at night
Remembering my abandoned soul as she floats on turquoise salty seas
And paints a fishing boat Cobalt blue
In the early morning dew
ready for my return
I hope
Or maybe she is getting used to rowing out to catch the fish
I would never let her eat
I have no choice but to sleep below the deck
There are no oars or oarsmen left
Sleep until
My soul and I are reunited
I will not leave this boat now unti I am home
If I capsize then, so be it
My soul taught me to surrender long ago
There is no air
no mountains or anywhere worth visiting
until I return to the Palace where she
Waits and weaves
for the shattered bones and demented one, to return
from poisoned waters.
Menelaus lied to me
And deluded me with treasures that sit here beside me but belonged to the Trojans.
I will fall asleep on this wrecked boat
Without
My men to take the oars
They were eaten with lies
Seduced by the sun
And songs of flying away
When they wanted to trap me with their delusions of a just and better world
away from Ithaca
Athena is my only hope
My protectress on this raging sea
Persuading the other Gods,
Who I seem to have upset with my mortality,
To bring me
one day
to my soul
my home
I cannot fight it anymore
The war and my mad delusions have exhausted me
So sleep until she brings me home
Wretched
Unregonisable
Wrinkled like a fisherman who knows the scars below the water
Will I know my home when I return
Or from the war she too has been fighting
Will she be so transformed
A myth I created to help me stay alive
Will my soul
herself be so be tired of waiting
that we cannot join again together under the olive tree
where once we slept,
before the war I never wanted to be part of
I pretended to be mad
But I was taken
to fight a war that I did not believe in
Will the olive tree be there or will it too be destroyed by plague fires and monsters
It is the Sirens still calling me with their sweet voices who could be my greatest enemy
For now I sleep on this boat
And still hear their song
to go back to them
It is their voices that pull me
still from so far away
but their lyrics are empty
So I cannot listen anymore and put wax in my ears
Let the sea and Athena decide if my soul and I will meet
(C) 2020 Katrina Parsey
