Poetry & Portraits: Theseus

Drawing by Susan C. Price

Theseus
By Eric Meub

[Editor’s Note: I chose to republish this Poetry & Portrait pairing today because, 79 years ago today, my mother gave birth to me, and I noticed that the last time I republished the pairing was the day after my 78th birthday – though no god gave ME the body of an ad for underwear. Eric’s poem & Susan’s drawing first graced us as Second Saturday’s Sonnet on June 14, 2014, which happened to be the date of my late sister Flo Elowee’s 84^th birthday. I trust that her husband, Don Story, DID have such a body….]


The king gave me protection, and the god
the body of an ad for underwear,
but on the docks of Troezen in a fraud
of both I tempted every sailor there.

A gray-haired captain who had bowed before
my father’s throne now cruised me through the fog
about the ships. I watched him jump to shore,
all muscles, then I led him like a dog.

Winter slapped the lines against the mast
he pinned me to. He slipped a tiny head
into my hand—a horse head sea charm cast
in bronze—to save me from myself, he said.

I murdered all my way to Athens, grim
as Neptune, just to shake the smell of him.

Copyright © 2014, 2015, 2020, 2021, 2022 by Susan C. Price & Eric Meub Eric Meub, architect, lives and practices in Pasadena, the adopted brother of the artist, Susan C. Price. They respect, in their different ways, the line.