Odysseus

Hours later it occurred to me:
I had leaned over the rail at the world’s
navel


in Delos that floats on the water
under the sun exposed as light and flaming oil
like a primordial egg falling down the sides of a cooking pot.
This is the shrine without adjectives


and the women dance slowly on the blue tiles
circle and look each other in the eye,
the edges of their dresses wet and their breaths  
scarves, tambourines in their hands, their scent of faraway salt.


I remembered the darkness spreading over me
like an eyelid still sensing the moisture of the pupil widening underneath.


Hard to cross the water around a flickering heart.
Flesh wrapped in flesh between the sheets and the odor of honey and seaweed
fill another afternoon, there’s no more wax to seal the collapsing will,
and the chest box fills with sand.  Evening arrives and the children, damp-haired,
laugh, grow distant from me, as I lean on the rail,
converting days into the folds of wet sails.

Odysseus