From heights Olympian to the hum drum. I read a frazzled woman’s blog, I heard her frustration and imagined her next step. (Too much time on my scrubbed clean covid and germ-free hands, I imagine.)

Left In The Dust.

At school I’d daydream through the long boring classes,
Heroic tales of Hera and Hercules, so the lesson passes.

Exchanging today’s tedium’s for yesterday’s mythic stories,
Tall tales of ancient battles, of Achilles and Paris’s vain glories.

These days I’ve a Hades of a life, dragging the kids out of bed,
Getting ’em washed and fresh-faced and dressed and fed.

No honeyed milk nor sweet ambrosia bless this houses breakfast table,
Three growing boys, fling in food fights and I’m left an Augean stable.

Packed lunches, back packs and pack ’em in the Minivan;
Every morning this Moms labors become more Herculean.

Whatever happened to those long lost schoolgirl’s dreams?
Romantic fantasies of Helen of Troy, of a thousand triremes?

…Waiting at the red light, back to the past I absently wander
Till horns and a green light remind me my Odyssey’s a Honda.

The journey to school has all the usual boystrous push and shove,
A display of more pokes pinches and punches than brotherly love.

Spilling out the sliding door, off with nary a backward glance,
I’m rueing too many wasted days- and three nights of romance.

The Greek God I thought loved me eternally now no longer cares,
I naively married a Narcissus interested in his silly human affairs.

This ever-smiling mother, his secondary lover is going to disappear,
There is a Troy, a Carthage, Athens, Paris, Texas- anywhere but here.

 

Obbverse