Penelope at the Loom

Today she will entwine red

the color of sunrise.

She pulls over and through vertical

Threads- packed hard down with the 

Shuttle leaving tight neat knots.

This is how she always spends her days

She thinks of her husband gone twenty years

Their infant son now a man.  How bitterly

Those hours spent arranged in colored weave

that shows no time, like the shore

licked nightly clean by tide.  She craves

Odysseus to float to her front door

heralded by seagull cries- a piece of driftwood

dropped, joyously, at her feet.

A freshness in the air and she recalls last night's 

buffet of rain that crushed out suitors' revels-

left olive leaves strewn over hard packed ground.

All summer gone in those leaves

all sundrench all dew.  Gaia giving

then destroying

what took eternity to grow.

Her days weave nights and nights unravel days

The tight weft of hours built up and loosed

Ceaselessly storing moments like coins.

Dawn's rosy finger streak the dark

Light has streaked her hair

By the rythm of some loom.