ithaca

twenty years older, muscles wasted on a diet of sun 

and thin fish, does odysseus strain to pull that bow?

an audience of strangers. a woman who knows him

across the length of a shroud. ithaca bleak and fanged

all around him, foreign now. at the light-sick range

in the sticks, my archery teacher adjusts my form: 

a softer grip, shoulder to elbow in one clean bridge.

i’m new to the sport, raw on the local desperation

to escape this place and return stronger or wilder or

more monstrous—but to return, you understand. 

nostos. homegoing. tennessee. ithaca forever. 

i’m seventeen. at full draw, a certain muscle 

stretches wide in the upper back, always too tight

in beginners, crabbed and angry, unworked 

by the world outside the range. it hunches cold

beneath the wedge of scapula, refusing to winch

my shoulder into true. corrective, my teacher seizes

the raised elbow, rams the arm into position.

pain crunches like a blown fuse, unwiring me:

the muscle tears. there were archers aboard 

greek triremes, eyes above eyes prow-painted 

to steer around disaster, watch over their own 

wayfaring. long rangings in those days, weeks at sea. 

for odysseus, years—an arrow suspended in flight, 

far from its destination. some scholars say

odysseus strung a longbow so immense he alone

could bend its arms, though his was only mortal

strength, no divine parentage. others say the bow 

was recurve, in greece a new and eastern 

technology, strung backward, a puzzle too complex

for the enemies of  his house. when i heal enough

to lift my arms, i return to my compound bow, 

intricate and sophisticated, rotating cams

on synchronized cables, a pull weight adjustable 

to my youth. it’s simple to draw, no contest:

a single smooth arc, three fingers on the string. 

the muscle in my back wails to announce itself,

an alarm that will sound for the rest of my days,

a reminder that home, unmarked, has marked me. 

decades ago, when odysseus stepped into his ship,

the sea washed clean his footprints from the sand. 

the lambs he raised are dead now; life ended

and began without his hand on the nock. once, 

a king left his island and someone else came home. 

quiet now, my teacher tells me. no rigidity in the limbs, 

no anxiety in the bow. breathe in as you rise. 

breathe out with release. odysseus opens his fingers 

and watches his arrow streak through the heads 

of a dozen axes, a shuttle clacking across the warp 

of a loom. my aim, never perfect, spatters the target, 

but i know my form: bend until the muscle sings. 

it’s strong enough to launch, fly. arrive again.