A Modern Odyssey

The old man is going home:

crossing a bridge left fifty years ago

in adolescent rage.

Home –

after twelve trials and a thousand dangers

after a foreign wife and sixteen grandchildren

who could not speak in the tones of his youth.

The old man is going home:

he whose heart has never lost the sun

on gray-silver olive leaves.

and whose now-weak eyes still reflect

the green Aegean.

Anastasius-called-Tom is going back:

back to his family –

to brothers he did not write to in forty years

and the grave…

the grave of a father named Christos,

the father he saw once in the half-century,

the father who never forgave the son.

Back to a pattern as old as life.

Will Penelope still be weaving?