At the crossroads, Hectate was always the one who entertained us.
Latin was never spoken here. How strange.
Yes, we always left gifts, quite a few,enough to satisfy wild dogs, selfish men jackals,
and Rhiiannon who flew here to satisfy me
watching through the open bathroom door,the shower curtain missing, shampoo coursing through my hair,
Saturday night, late. (Perhaps it was Sunday morning, early.)
Our gods watched us imprison the fugitives deep in the sand
until only their heads were exposed.Then the earth began to shake and roll releasing a fresh spring.
Carob trees sprouted out of nowhere and there was shade and
refreshment,Then an angel appeared badly disfigured as a foreign trader.
Not able to fold her wings, she kneeled before father and son.
There was no need for all of this. These men were thieves.
They deserved punishment, but she knew of them what we did not.
With a look she silenced us into another place.An earthquake was not necessary to set them free.
This too happened at the crossroad.
| Copyright © 2021 by Michael H. Brownstein Michael H. Brownstein’s volumes of poetry, A Slipknot Into Somewhere Else and How Do We Create Love?, were published by Cholla Needles Press in 2018 & 2019, respectively. |
This gripping poem calls on a reader to access several areas of his broad liberal-arts education, and it challenges my own. I think I catch the reference to Golgotha, but I would have to revisit the Latin classics for Hecate. And where would one find out about Rhiiannon? Wikipedia, of course! But Wikipedia’s woman’s name has only one letter i (did I miss this in copy editing?): “Rhiannon is a major figure in the Mabinogi, the medieval Welsh story collection. She appears mainly in the First Branch of the Mabinogi, and again in the Third Branch. She is a strong-minded Otherworld woman, who chooses Pwyll, prince of Dyfed (west Wales), as her consort, in preference to another man to whom she has already been betrothed. She is intelligent, politically strategic, beautiful, and famed for her wealth and generosity. With Pwyll she has a son, the hero Pryderi, who later inherits the lordship of Dyfed. She endures tragedy when her newborn child is abducted, and she is accused of infanticide. As a widow she marries Manawydan of the British royal family, and has further adventures involving enchantments.”
ReplyDeleteYou dug deep and that's a good thing--but my people are sometimes based on figures you can find throughout the world of folklore and sometimes in places not known yet. Let's keep the two i's. I feel it fits her.
ReplyDeleteRhiiannon of this poem is your character, so of course you get to spell her name however your muse says.
DeleteMore on why I wrote this piece coming soon to a comment box near you.
ReplyDeleteI love the phrase, “coming soon to a comment box near you”!
DeleteI knew who Hecate is, but Amesemi had me running to Google too. I'm interested to hear what sources have to say about Rhiiannon; she is the classic wronged wife, the faeries having stolen her infant son and killed a puppy and spread its blood around to make it look like a murder. Marriages were often political alliances, with the goal of producing a male heir always the top priority; the loss of the heir is a huge debacle. Her husband does not believe her, accuses her, and when she is finally free she rides away, with him following desperately, but never able to catch up and explain himself. She is therefor related with the rainbow; you can follow all you want but never find it. The image of the miscreants buried up to their necks is SO Druidical in nature. They were known to sacrifice humans by burying alive, or "pressing" them under the bog, from where we get all the bog bodies in the UK and western Europe.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a setup! There was a lot to dig into on this one. For some reason, my favorite line is “Saturday night, late (perhaps it was Sunday morning, early)”. But I love how there are several out of place characters who somehow have come together.
ReplyDeleteI wrote this piece after reading a Talmudic tale about two travelers who were accused of thievery, a crime they may or may not have committed, but because they were God fearing in a time of numerous Gods, they were granted a chance by the one God they supported.
ReplyDeleteThe Celtic Druids, a few of the characters in this piece, I do not believe ever made it to the Levant, but I liked the way their names sounded--and I changed the spelling of one of them just because I liked it better.
Superstition is still a terrible thing, even now in 2021. We are threatened still by newcomers from other places, even other neighborhoods.
I saw this poem as a poem of hope, a hope we can learn once in for all to get along.