by Stanley Toledo
Go with a friend to listen again to the travails
in life’s haze or go with poetry to enjoy the turn
of words. So, it was that alone on a public bench
I read a book of verse when another sat down and
I felt a shudder familiar from my school days.
Odysseus had his giant Cyclops and I had one
of my own, and now it had returned. Mine was
as menacing as his, a lawless creature without
a sense of justice or piety. But Odysseus was
brave, cunning; his ways unknown to me.
My Cyclops was absent since youth, but nights
insisted that I recall the humiliations tolerated
and confront my shameful meekness, how I
cowed, hid, ran and took the long way around,
how unlike heroic Odysseus I existed.
Today I am passed my middle years with little
to lose but my head and I knew in that minute
I had one last chance to prove I have the grit to lose
my head, deserving at least to be among Odysseus’
crew who for dinner the Cyclops did choose.
To this monster, I would turn, grab its face with
the ill will of a vicious beast and gnaw out the eye.
But when I confronted my tormentor, I was taken
aback. It was my Cyclops, but what was a terrible
mountain had washed down to a serene hill.
Tailored in the great virtues, he said hello and my
name spoke, arresting my reprisal and inspiring
a philosophy that caused me to inquire of what
events had moved him to this conversion. In the
call of a poet, he answered and, as he did, I awoke.
Stanley Toledo is a writer.
