by Sue Cronmiller

It was good to be back in Laconia.
Wind pitted cliffs, prickly pears,
a few gnarled olive trees.

Here she could be more connected
to what mattered in the story.

Nothing in Troy
lent itself to writing.

Too much plot. Far too much
death and madness. Such pathos.

She feared her life to be
melodramatic by any standard.

At home, she could be her own
captive, holding up against

Menelaus, who, in his darkness,
wants from her a full account.

He sees the war in her.

She whose beauty would erase memory
has had her marital indiscretions
set down for the world in an epic poem.

Does the epic itself make us forget?

All evening she’s been out walking
the deserted fields alone.

From her journal she culls—
There was a fountain, an embrace, a willingness
in that place she can’t get back to now.

*Photo of an olive tree courtesy zamario.