Toy Ship in a Shop Window (Part 1 of 2)

Odysseus in the city streets,
between his place of business and his home,
arrested by the shock of sails encased in glass,
is for a moment paralyzed, unable now to pass.
He stares into a mirror of himself, or memory of childish dreams,
hears again the heroes shout as they fight and love the sea.
He calls to them, but to himself he speaks: I do not know what I have lost,
do not remember when.

A captain calls to him from on the heaving deck:
I will tell you the tale, he cries,
of what I have learned upon the sea.
For this is what she teaches,
of losing and finding,
of answering and quests:

A voyage is a movement embraced by departure and arrival,
an arc between speaking and hearing.
More it asks of us than we of it.
Look neither to your right nor to your left, my mariner;
see the bowsprit tilting northward to the axle of the world,
and beyond it the star-dipper full of quenching dreams,
and farther still the arching bow, the quiver full, the future waiting.
Will you dream with me the long-abandoned ways,
and be with me again the father-king and his valiant son
well met upon the sea?

Odysseus in the city streets then dares reply:
I hear your songs and groans, he cries,
but where are those who might have been?
What would I impart if they were by me now?
Seek now the glorious moment, I would say,
the act that lives as a sign in memory.
Seek the indestructible truth, I would declare,
seek, if you wish, this art or toy through which a soul,
gone these many years, now speaks to you....

~Michael O’Brien