Landfarer: A Wife's Log

     Variations on The Seafarer and The Odyssey

My first ocean
waved in the trees of Tennessee's
blue-green mountains. Their scalloping
waters rocked me awake
as light began.

                       After Carolina
launched me in fathoms of lore,
I boarded this marriage vessel, sailed
the dry continent in a schooner
rattling with dishes, swaying
with the two of us. We brought back
a son, wet with Pacific rain.
                                            Another
sea swirled us: bays of wind-washed
bean fields lapped at the shores
of our adopted town, perched like a buoy
in Ohio's rolling earth. Another son
and a daughter climbed in. We grew
roots on our keel —
                                   until time to lurch
to a larger port: a city's green shoals,
islands where ash and maple
muffled the traffic's surf. Our boathouse
danced, our crusted anchor buried
itself deep among buckeyes
and bloodroot.
                          But now hear this:
haul up and pull out, North
to a state with no name,
stiff lakes, cold moorings.
                                         Husband!
Again I open this wife's log, fingers
nearly freezing, as my Ulysses
drags his Penelope from home
to sail the white straits.

Elinor Benedict
Shenandoah
The Washington and Lee University Review
A Portfolio of Appalachian Poets
Volume 55, Number 1
Spring/Summer 2005

Copyright © 2005 by Shenandoah:
The Washington and Lee University Review
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.

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