Leda And The Stars

The Aegean sprays tears of lives once lived
And wails for those who could not live them.
It crashes like iron shoulders upon the shields of kings,
Sending crowns into the sea.
Waves break at her feet.
The sand steals her toes, 
Swallows her soles,
Sweet Leda.
Her eyes are Minoan frescos- 
Her hair- flaxen silk spun by Athena, curled
like the spirals of the galaxy.
Her skin- leather hide- hardened by solitude.
Her pride, patina copper, void of luster.
Her family tree a rotted stump.
Her mouth holds no truths.  
Her questions go unanswered
By stars who have no tongues
Or future
Or present.
Just stories
Of light travelling years to say: that only supernovas follow, 
And what you see in a twinkle,
May already be dust.
Her name was Leda-
Just Leda.
A bastard war child born of hubris and rape
To Mussolini and Greece.
Orphaned at birth, daughter to the constellations, 
She speaks to the stars,
Praying to a faceless mother, the other, and another of her name.

The Mother

Leda palms her navel incubating the olive pit planted beneath,
The great decision to carry or not.
A finger connecting the dots above,
Tracing a W.
The throned queen Cassiopeia.
Mother to December meteor showers, 
And vanity,
And to the saying:
The daughters bear the sins of the mother.
Mother-
To Andromeda.
Victim of maternal pride.
Lamb to the gods. 
Chained to a jagged shore
Bare and exposed
Bracing for Poseidon’s retribution.
The Kraken, swallower of seas, 
Sinker of ships,
With daggers for teeth and scales like bronze shields, 
And Eyes for bloodlust.
It dwarfed whales and eclipsed the sun
As it rose
To claim its prize,
Andromeda.
Saved by Perseus on his winged Pegasus
And the head of the gorgon Medusa, 
Turning the Kraken to stone, 
And dust, 
And stars.
And stories.
Leda asked the queen:
Would you hold your tongue,
To spare your daughter, 
Trading immortality for love?
She gave no reply.

The Other

In the horizon past the moonlight’s reach
In the nucleus of Gaia, 
The marrow of existence, 
Temple of Apollo.
Home to the Daughter of Delphi- 
Keeper of the flame
The knower.
Who chanted before chasms,
Chemicals dancing in her skull.
Who went down the rabbit hole.
Who swallowed the blue pill.
The oracle.
Inhaling vaporous psycho-Learic lies,
Spewing realities yet to be.
Who fed on desire and angst.
Who made kings of peasants.
Who married daughters to nobles.
Who dragged boys to die in Persia.
Who made hopeful mothers weep.
Who inked the fates of all,
And chiseled heartache into stone.
Leda asked the oracle:
If I give birth, will I die like my mother?  
Will the child grow to resent me?
She gave no reply.

Another of Her Name

Leda looks out into the celestial sphere
To the asterism of the northern cross,
Clock to the seasons,
Compass to the galaxy,
Backbone to Cygnus.
The great swan,
Flying on stellar winds of the spacial rift
Wading through the milky river of light
Made infamous by the poet Yates,
Wings fully raised
Flapping and hissing,
Neck cocked back,
Taking aim.
Zeus incognito.
Invader of Leda, 
Queen of Sparta
Ravaged by a flurry of feathers, 
Force and deceit,
Marked with the scarlet A,
Leda.
Who bore Helen
Daughter to a victim of the god’s lust,
Who sent Achilles and Agamemnon to Troy
To pillage, 
To make more bastard war children.
Children without fathers.
Children without names.
She asked queen Leda, 
“If I keep this child,
Will its face remind me?
Will I resent it?”
She gave no reply.

Before Leda walked on the beaches of Crete.
Before she was raped in an orphanage.
Before she was born.
Before her mother died in childbirth.
Before Italian soldiers defiled Greece and its sons and daughters.
Before war.
Before the geocentric idea that
We were at the center of the universe.
Before the order of civilization.
Before knowledge.
Before Love and Hate.
Before Man.
Before Life.
Before the Earth.
Before orbiting dust collided to form planets.
Before helium and hydrogen coalesced into stars.
Before quarks, electrons, and neutrinos chattered through space.
Before the birth of space itself, and time, and matter.
Before the expansion of nothingness.
Before everything that ever was, is or ever will be.
There was nothing. 
No stories told in the stars.