Ulysses and the Hare

It was only after God had taken everything was he allowed to rest, released for a time from His malicious salty grasp. Washed ashore, harried over oceans, a wake of shattered mariners and drowned vessels behind him, the insane anarchist king feeling keen tired muscles stretched over a broken frame. Ulysses, cipher of lost geographies, wonders over the notion of what to do next. I imagine he dreamt there on the beach of Penelope.

Pale skin flushed with activity, arteries running blue carrying blood just under her surface like hidden tributary rivers. The wide unflawed expanse just under the subtle ridge of her collar bones, the country punctuated by her ribs, the plunging region to that juncture where they meet, and thus entwined and locked in a kiss, become a circle complete.

I dream of the faraway Nation of Ulysses under a shower I procrastinated all morning for fear of losing the smell of Her on me. Rivulets run down my own chest in clever patterns. I am navigator of my own mind, I am not lost here. I grew up, left and returned to Tennessee and eventually became un-enslaved by my story. Ulysses found by Nausicaa and thus restored, wandered wide away from that place, homeward to hammer out a solution.

In the mountains, in a cold rain, he came upon a large hare lying wounded under an olive tree. A rabbit no longer running, out of tricks. Ulysses crouched, helmet pushed back on his head, rain shattering on the shield strapped across his back, holding the animal close to his chest. The matted fur and breathing of the rabbit, Ulysses’ cloak trapping their warmth. This is my story and my story is me.