Kelly Cressio-Moeller
Ithaka
Dear Penelope, do you now sleep among the catacombs?
Scarves of white drift over the Aegean – an altar of bottomless blue.
I have gone to the edge of the world and still cannot find you.
Even the olive trees raise their spangled limbs skyward in longing.
Mother Earth slides her abacus beads, conjures storms quick as curses.
When lightning struck, did the boat protect or beckon the bolt?
Island flowers shut their eyes only when the stars disrobe – hope and sorrow held
within the same root.
She imagines him bright-toothed & swarthy, but her husband is just sunburned & homesick.
So many suitors holding her skeins – she’s woven a trail for her waylaid mariner, long
as his beard and her undoing.
In twenty years she has never asked, What shall I wish for myself?
Odysseus wonders, Do I have the right to return?
Maids cast offerings to the sea: red rose petals and grape leaves, love and wine all that remain.
** The line What shall I wish for myself? is a reworking Mary Oliver’s line What shall I wish for, for myself ?
Kelly Cressio-Moeller’s poetry has new work forthcoming in Cultural Weekly, Escape Into Life, and Spillway, and is previously published in Boxcar Poetry Review, Crab Creek Review, Crab Orchard Review, Poet Lore, Rattle, Redwood Coast Review, The Sand Hill Review, Southern Humanities Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and ZYZZYVA as well as the anthology First Water: Best of Pirene’s Fountain and Diane Lockward’s book, The Crafty Poet. She shares her fully-caffeinated life with her tall husband, two ever-growing sons, and their immortal basset hound in Northern California.
Return to November 2014 Edition
Dear Penelope, do you now sleep among the catacombs?
Scarves of white drift over the Aegean – an altar of bottomless blue.
I have gone to the edge of the world and still cannot find you.
Even the olive trees raise their spangled limbs skyward in longing.
Mother Earth slides her abacus beads, conjures storms quick as curses.
When lightning struck, did the boat protect or beckon the bolt?
Island flowers shut their eyes only when the stars disrobe – hope and sorrow held
within the same root.
She imagines him bright-toothed & swarthy, but her husband is just sunburned & homesick.
So many suitors holding her skeins – she’s woven a trail for her waylaid mariner, long
as his beard and her undoing.
In twenty years she has never asked, What shall I wish for myself?
Odysseus wonders, Do I have the right to return?
Maids cast offerings to the sea: red rose petals and grape leaves, love and wine all that remain.
** The line What shall I wish for myself? is a reworking Mary Oliver’s line What shall I wish for, for myself ?
Kelly Cressio-Moeller’s poetry has new work forthcoming in Cultural Weekly, Escape Into Life, and Spillway, and is previously published in Boxcar Poetry Review, Crab Creek Review, Crab Orchard Review, Poet Lore, Rattle, Redwood Coast Review, The Sand Hill Review, Southern Humanities Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and ZYZZYVA as well as the anthology First Water: Best of Pirene’s Fountain and Diane Lockward’s book, The Crafty Poet. She shares her fully-caffeinated life with her tall husband, two ever-growing sons, and their immortal basset hound in Northern California.
Return to November 2014 Edition