Of Empty Seas and Fated Skies

I.
She gave our golden days of summer
to Dionysian dreams,
chasing phantom shards of sunlight
as she fled the hand of Fate.       

        The sun was out and we were in
        the Labyrinth in the kitchen,
        searching small, dark cupboards
        for the treasure she had hidden.

Swallowed up in all her sorrows,
swamped by soughing Acheron,
she drank the Lethean waters,
and forgot that we were there.

        Bottled ichor, precious poison,
        creeping shadow, smothering all;
        in the Daedalean night
        we tipped it down the sink.


II.
A wand’ring, cruel Odysseus,
he sailed in winter’s gales,
crashing like the heaving seas
and pounding us like waves.     

        We walked his Heraclean tightrope
        always looking down;
        it was not all that surprising
        that we tumbled to the ground.

He was a harsh and Spartan stranger
and his eyes looked straight through us;
we children of the Antipodes
were never quite enough.

        Disappointment, disillusion,
        shattered dreams and empty seas;
        his compass roads led to the Styx,
        to the Ferryman of Hades.


III.
We soared on wings of Icarus
in amaranthine hours,
spinning wildly in life’s slipstream
as the days turned into years.

        For all our lives together,
        we were stuck on separate shores
        as beneath our darkly fated skies
        we corroded from inside.