Black Sail

Black Sail

“A dream I had,

Mother,

of a man with noble

and furrowed brow,

waiting, waiting.

Vainly, his eyes

sweep the horizon

of a fathomless sea.”

“Come, my son, it is time,

now follow me.”

Amid majestic trees

in forest deep

lichened, granite heavy,

a rock does hold

a secret.

Heroes do

what heroes must.

The rock is raised

a sword revealed.

“Gods be praised

‘tis yours to keep,

Theseus.”

The son departs and

giants twain

are quickly slain.

A bed, too long,

too short for some,

fools not our canny youth,

whose actions swift

suspends cruel

Procrustes

twixt sea and cliff.

For heroes do

what heroes must.

Mothers cry

and fathers blanch.

On the morrow

a ship must launch

with a cargo

of despair.

Youths and maidens

pair by pair

a horrible fate to meet

on the distant isle of Crete

for Athens,

its blood debt must keep.

By baleful acts,

Medea

knows her husband’s son

and does propose

a toast,

slipping the youth

a poisoned cup.

‘Ere he can sup

his father,

Aegeus,

spies the sword

well-known.

The one he hid

beneath a stone.

His son he welcomes

to his home.

Eye moist,

heart full, young

Theseus

knows what he must do.

Withdraws from the king’s

loving grasp,

“There is a boon

that I must ask.”

And on the morrow

the king greaves,

bids farewell

as his son leaves

beneath the sail

of black.

For heroes do

what heroes must.

Wrought of stone

and wisdom both,

Daedalus’s Labyrinth

holds a secret dread,

a monster fed

on blood and sinew

of Athen’s youthful hopes.

Minos,

angered and vengeful king,

has a daughter fair;

a silken strand,

she offers

Theseus –

whom she loves –

to guide him hence,

when he has done

what heroes must.

At the heart of

Minos’s maze,

our hero brave

and his Athenians

find the monstrous calumny,

with head of bull

and taste for blood,

asleep.

Theseus

rips horn from head,

the creature howls

with dread

and charges;

only to drop dead

as his horn

does embed

itself

within his darkened heart.

Using his lover’s

silken thread

Theseus

is led to freedom

and to wed

Ariadne.

But heroes do

what heroes must, as

Dionysus,

god of wine

and lust,

seeks Ariadne for himself.

Forlorn,

his love abandoned

on Naxos Isle,

this Prince

to Athens bound,

his spirits as black

as his forgotten sail.

A man with noble

and furrowed brow

scans the horizon

of the fathomless deep,

for a pristine sail.

His heart leaps

when a silhouette he spies

but its shadow

resolves

into a father’s despair,

and he casts himself

into the air,

and falls.