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| At Central Carolina Community College Creative Writing Program, October 2015 [Ashley Memory: Exploring the Joys of Creative Writing] |
[First published in The Way the Rain Works (Sable Books, 2015) and republished here by permission of the author.]
We descend into the rocky womb-like cave
where Zeus’s mother kept him secret from
devouring gods until his time arrived.
Our guide gives us candles. Later
we discover Eleusis, of the mysteries,
ourselves the only pilgrims scorching at
this non-attraction of withered stone.
At the heart of the oldest excavation,
mystery within mystery, nests the small
pit of the altar where the miracle
took form. We pray our life will turn out right.
Our child is conceived under constellations
named for warriors, monsters, children sacrificed.
Descending into our own Greek tragedy,
my wife takes the narrow path down
into her cave of recovered memories. Helpless
in the sunlight, I shout encouragement.
Will her guides mutter what she needs
to hear? Will candles light the mystery?
My mind is dark and spacious as the cave.
Love is the only entrance to that scar.
The midwife checks the fetal monitor.
Suiting up, methodical, the doctor
admits it’s an emergency, but one
he will control. Our son is born all right
and stays all right. I hold him in the dim
disordered anteroom, watching his eyes
until she wakens, like the time she woke
to harbor lights at Kos, our blanket spread
on gravel and oleander by the sea.
The sun rose on the coast of Anatolia
across a nameless channel no boats crossed.
| Copyright © 2018 by Ralph Earle |
What a gorgeous poem Ralph. It bears multiple readings. Absolutely brilliant. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Eric. My son, who loves the poem, asked me about the backstory to it this week, and I filled him in with all the details about the Dictaen Andron (the "Cave of Zeus" on Crete), the harbor of Kos where Hippocrates taught under a plane tree, and the altar of Eleusis near Athens where the religion of the Great Mother was celebrated. I am currently working on another poem that focuses on the details of my son's birth.
ReplyDeleteWow, Ralph, "evocative" seems a poor word to describe how this poem makes one feel. I have long believed good art evokes thoughts, images and emotions in the observer, in fact that is the true measure of "good"in art. This one has it all.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words, Roger. You hit the definition of good art on the head - what you describe is what I am always striving for.
DeleteI think the mythological allusions heighten the stakes, which are always high for humans looking for meaning in life.
ReplyDelete