Thursday, January 25, 2018

Joy V. Sheridan writes

The Sleepwalker’s Corral 

In the distance, I caught the hoof of darkness 

Splintering and re-gathering like black foam, 
Edging the wave of an angry sea – 
And what was it at this hour 
Which fretted me so?

The languid limpet spurled up  

From the spent sea – 
And was there a dream  
Or Mermaid and Merman 
In that foaming lather?

Oh! Come now, and listen 

To the Muse and the complaint 
Of the Siren – she who lures 
The mariner to his death;

And are those river nymphs 

Carrolling about the ocean, 
Having been swept by the lure 
Of Poseidon, to be down on the shore?

Dark tendrils of seaweed  

Those mer creatures use, 
And into the gloom 
The doom of ships is heard.

Dying gannet’s voice on a hinterland 

Of spectral ship-shapes – 
Now these stallions and mares 
Rise again

And bring their Eleuthian nails 

To bleed black ink

On the rolling, twisted, white columns 

Of Age, Race – race you now 
To the far-off Nirvana,  
And bring wares and tributes 
To the everlasting, eternal 
Lord of the Seas.

Rest not easy in the feast 

Of scuttled crab and fish; 
The octopus bows and folds 
His everlasting salute –

So to a distant memory 

Of peaceful slumber 
 Fine Art - Poseidon - Original Oil Painting on HDF by artist Darko Topalski
Poseidon -- Darko Topalski

1 comment:

  1. In some accounts Rhea saved Poseidon was spared from the wrath of his father Kronus by concealing him among a flock of lambs and then feeding her husband a colt in his place. When his younger brother Zeus overthrew Kronus, Poseidon was given lordship over the waters. He was the god of earthquakes and horses, the creator of new islands, the bringer of mental illness and epilepsy, and the giver of calm waters as well as storms. He fathered the 1st horse either by mating with a pre-equine creature or by spilling his sperm on the rocks, and he fathered the talking horse Arion and the flying horse Pegasus, as well as various monsters such as Charybdis and the cyclops Polyphemus and heroes including Theseus, Orion, Bellerophon, and Atlas the 1st king of Atlantis.

    Eleuthia was the goddess of childbirth and the personification of liberty, whose cult was connected with Poseidon (as Enesidaon "the earth shaker"). She was the midwife in the annual birth of the Divine Child, identified as Zeus. According to an early poet, Olen, she was "the clever spinner" and thus an early identification of Fate; he claimed she was older than Kronus.

    A gannet is a seabird which can pursue fish underwater after diving from heights of 30 m (98 ft), hitting the water at 62 mph (100 kph). Because of their consumption of large quantities of fish, anyone with a voracious appetite is referred to as a "gannet."

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