A look back at Homer – Day 8.4.2018

Circe, the Divine   (Day 8)

 

There are explanations of  the divine and integrity

when it comes to women and witchcraft;

women of intellect; of healing and superior

care. The spell men couldn’t fathom was

simplicity. Circe had first to set Odysseus

to safety, avoid the mutiny of his men,

hold them in survival, suitable to no human

memory: well cared for, comfortable enough.

Her love transformed the outcome for all; with

her resources, her wit and advise. Homesick

men departed her shores and too little credit

history gives her, Circe, the Divine.         Then

Homer gets carried away with tales of Hades

before Odysseus returns to cavort again with

Circe. But that was his mistake, not hers.

The story hesitates here; the narrators’

devise before another chapter begins.

A welcome break so that I could study

Circe the Divine with equity in mind.

 

Benita H. Kape © 8.4.2018

(Shelley talks a lot about looking back to all earlier poets and poetry.)

Let’s take a leaf from Shelley’s book, and write poems in which mysterious and magical things occur. Your poem could take the form of a spell, for example, or simply describe an event that can’t be understood literally. Feel free to incorporate crystal balls, fauns, lightning storms, or whatever seems fierce and free and strange. Poetry is like that (at least when you’ve been reading Shelley!

 

 

 

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A second poem day 7 – 2018

 

DDDD   NNNN  AAAA     (A Day 7 poem)

 

Overgrown your garden.

 

Once you would have said it with flower.

You say it anyway, the poem about tall poppies,

 

You grieve the removal of trees.

And you plant another forest of words.

 

Too much ground

given over to garden beds.

You never get back to attend them.

 

Keep it simple. The more you say

the less people remember.

Less is not more when it comes

to mowing lawns taken over by flower-beds.

 

Gardens, or more exactly,

my garden, was fleeting.

So too the majority of all poems, it is said.

 

I’ve never won a garden show

but am prepared to take the risk with poems

in competition. Poems are so much riskier

than gardening. Only the elements

to contend with in gardening,

whereas with poems, it’s me: kiwi, kid, (cranky)

no, that’s an Aussie expletive The chorister, feminist

frankly a freak in garden clothes.

 

The many sides of me I will

free again and again; find answers

and journeys and excitement.

The DNA remains the same;

the creativity, the garden neglect.

 

I tried not to be my mother’s daughter,

but I was; the only one out of six.

And long ago the poet won out.

 

Benita H. Kape © 7/8.4.2018

 

This is not the poem I thought I’d be bringing you. Though my mother has several writers in her 2nd generation, I was the only one in the first. For her, it may not have ended up her strength but for me, it’s what drives me.