Poetry

“I was going up to say something,
and stopped. Her profile against the curtains
was old, and dark like a hunting bird’s.”
 
~ Thomas Kinsella
 
 
Sebastiano Ricci painted Artemis without wings like Potnia Theron.
Perhaps hidden or clipped behind her back. As if more fragile, less severe.
 
The lunate crown a high arc across her brow, deep curve of a sickle,
filigree designs like silk threads, adorned with tourmaline and moonstone.
 
An emerald cabochon, keeping in the light. Within its opaque green,
as it housed the world beneath its nephrite. Sanded sheen, polished.
 
There was no leopard in repose, or piebald stag standing by her side.
Only a coonhound and whippet, both looking on as if witness to tragedy.
 
Nana had the same distant look when she died. Of shame. Hands crossed
over her chest, jade bangle clutched in the left, folded letter in the other.
 
I stood by the bed. To say something too, but stopped in mid-thought.
It was Mother’s profile this time, her silhouette ominous, like an osprey.
 
What of history? How much of it a ready truth, how much an invention?
How much an unresolved fiction, like family and the mythic ties that bind?
 
Mother wore celadon, instead of a funereal black. A thick, woven cotton.
The same cloth worn by widows. A Mandarin collar, hidden buttons.
 
Of all women, the way artists envisioned, Nana loved Artemis most of all.
She had the same tan skin, and lean frame. Small hips, muscular limbs.
 
Artemis was her patron saint, Nana mentioned by the parterre beds.
A vision by the cypress as a girl. And later, when she had lost her child.
 
There’s no muting of voices here, no shuttling between different ideals
at war with each other. There’s simply the sitting, and acknowledgment.
 
Of something larger than ourselves. Of mortality, our small importance,
the way we act and tend to the everyday. The way we look at people.
 
And ask for help, and help in return. Artemis in relief, writing an ode.
Open heart. Finger dipped in iron gall ink, fletching pulled from an arrow.
 
 
 
* This poem is a reprint. It was first anthologized when it won second prize in the Hungry Hill “Poets Meet Politics” Poetry Competition. The White Tower of Thessaloniki was one of the sites of peaceful demonstrations in Greece, now known as the Indignant Citizens Movement. 2012 marks a century after the tower was whitewashed, when Greece gained control of the city.