Health and Wellness Coaching - Between the Lines

Shades

               
         When Odysseus descended to the underworld
         and crossed the dark river to learn the key
         to his destiny, he poured the ritual milk and honey,
         the wine and barley and blood to summon the dead,
         but he never expected to find his mother among
         the shadows who were filled with mist and sifted
         with the wind which had no source. He had thought
         her alive and back in Ithaca expecting his return.
         He had assumed the worst ordeals were his own.
         But, when he reached out, shivering as he wept,
         to embrace the ghost, that wanderer found
         no substance, no flesh nor blood nor bone,
         and he must have felt as I did that first time home
         when my mother's mind had begun to wander
         and she disremembered not only the laughter,
         the lightning-struck chinaberry, the sunset
         peaches and fireflies and the sharp smell
         of catfish frying, but also her name and the fact
         that she was sitting in her kitchen of fifty years
         beside my father who stood there straining
         not to wring his hands or surrender to the tears
         welling around his eyes. She gathered her purse,
         her hat and wrap, then said, Please drive me home
         before strangers take every damned thing I own.
         Her eyes glaucous with terror, she was exhausted
         and desperate, almost herself, "an empty, flitting
         shade," as Homer says it, uncertain in her haze
         whether she was moving toward or away
         from what might be called the Great Dream.
         When she sobbed and cried, Where is my son?,
         I, too, felt bewildered, and not even a seer
         from the land of night and frost and smoke
         could tell me what words would amount
         to comfort, nor which constellation to steer by,
         nor where all this heart-sorrow might end.
       
         R. T. Smith

The Sewanee Review
Fall 2009 Copyright © 2009 by R. T. Smith
All rights reserved.