Odyssey
Fred Houpt
[boyboy_8@yahoo.com]
I used to think about him
In ways that were unkind
But still I never forgot him
The winds that swept the waters clean
As all winters do, with the precision of a
Surgeon working on a sculpture
He used to walk by those waters
Even though his thoughts muddied them
The clouds he left behind were only temporary
Climbing on top a generous rock
He would stare at the waves for long moments
And then taking a big breath he would say: I am empty
Gurgles and laps and splats of water
Kissing the moss on the rocks at the shore line
Told him that the lake was listening but it was unmoved
He said again: I am empty, I am empty.
Somehow he expected a mystical answer
But it was always the gulls who cried
I heard that he remembered how poets
Had devised wonderful metaphors about
Seagulls and the souls of dead sailors
The lake was always his last resort
When the books failed to break his descent
The prescriptions and meditations always ended here
Like a small boat with a puny rudder
He made his way around the map
Till one day realizing that the world was round
And in the circle that housed his mothers womb
That pushed him out onto the flat land
He made his peace with the sad journey
As a sailor now out of his element
Forced to grip the ribs of a boat that had no master
He conquered the elements of the inner storms
The violent sky, the angry sparks, the shouting answers
All came back as if beckoned by his own thoughts
Which he finally had to admit were true
Seeing the phosphorescent air lowering its shield
Coming down like comets, descending like ashes
He took his last breath of free air before making a choice
When new light took hold his bare neck
And land he touched as if a new breast
He cried to see that life was still his to live
And so it was that he came home to what
He never left. The warrior at one with his
Peace, that left only one survivor.
His peace a melted heart on bended knee,
The hearth he never left but thought he had
Was still his birthright for the taking.
© 1999 Fred Houpt, all rights reserved
appears here by permission
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I sat at the computer, put on the Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis by R.
Vaughan Williams and the words flowed with the music. It is completely autobiographical
but I made it come out sounding like Everyman's journey. I became my own Odysseus. I
hope others will find things to identify with.
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