FOR WHAT DO I WAIT?

"She is ambivalent, variously calling out for Artemis to kill her and, apparently, considering marrying one of the suitors. When the disguised Odysseus returns, she announces in her long interview with the disguised hero that whoever can string Odysseus's rigid bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axe shafts may have her hand. 'For the plot of the Odyssey, of course, her decision is the turning point, the move that makes possible the long-predicted triumph of the returning hero.'" --Bernard Knox, introduction to Robert Fagles's translation of The Odyssey (1996:55).

I would wait ten years or twenty
If I knew you would return
And like Penelope
Would be an island
And undo all the weaving done the day before
To delay my wedding day
And forestall any suitors
If I only had a certainty

But now my hope feels hopeless
And I wonder if
I am stalling the tapestry
For a man that will never come
A man that will be lured away by sirens
Who may not see the wisdom in wax and moly
For stopping up ears and warding off nymphs

UNTITLED

the flowers are mostly gone
but I still feel compelled to stop and smell
the blossom that remains on the branch

that's the part of me that existed
when peonies bloomed in the Square
the part of me that stopped--
supported by your arm--
and loosed a pebble from my shoe
before lifting my favorite flower to my face

except my love for you didn't exist then

now both parts of me stay on the stem
never to die very soon

Or, in haiku form...

the flowers are gone
but I still stop and smell your
blossom on the branch