June 2019
NOTE: I am happy to announce that my third chapbook, Icarus: Anthropology of Addiction, has been published by Water's Edge Press. The poems explore the layers of meaning in the Icarus myth and generational addiction. These three poems are from the collection. sylviacavanaugh.com
The Labyrinth
What if the famed maze of Crete
were a tomb?
A signifier of death
in carefully crafted tile.
But there is sex, too,
of course.
Jeremiah bespoke entrapment
in the Aegean pagan partridge dance
come to nest in Canaan.
Winged men spiraling outward
erotically hob-stepping
to the moon goddess.
Maybe the sun was jealous,
blazing down on the boy’s wax wings.
And what about addiction?
The way my husband would spin
a web of words,
linguistic dead ends
and illogic conclusions.
I wanted out with my mind intact.
So, I followed the golden thread
of words
in hushed percussion
nightly from my keyboard.
And what about the Minotaur?
Was he my husband,
or was he the addiction?
Why does he stay there
consuming maidens,
waiting to be slain?
Naucrate
Ever the mother of Icarus
named power of the sea
but with no edge of my own
my boundaries are defined
by other bodies
I’ve conformed to the contours
of my children
their dreams and sadnesses
I’ve soothed and cooled
the anger
sometimes flaring hot
between disparate particles
I’m the participle
that describes nouns
a verb downgraded
to an adjective
I’m the swelling tide
my thoughts are salt
a brine brim full
on the brink of saturation
my children take chances
I want to hold them afloat
Daedalus Surfs Refugio Beach
I saw him there
gray hair and spine
soldiered stiff
but with nimble ankles
to work the board
this is how he flies now
skimming the rising breast
of the sea
he glides the high tide
rides the moon goddess
in the full sun of morning
the sea permitting the light
to penetrate only the high
vaulting arc of the wave
blue giving way to beryl
but mostly the sea casts off the sun
in a scattering of sharp sparkle
like a shriek
of triumphant laughter
and when the wave he rides
is almost spent
and the board careens one way
and he the other
sideways or backwards
he washes up
in the sizzle of white foam
not quite water
not quite air
he thinks he once knew
free love
given and taken
in patchouli moonglo rooms
thinks he knew his way
around the maze
now he kisses the sand
and salt
refugio,
O, refugio
© 2019 Sylvia Cavanaugh
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