Poetry: Two by Rick Hite

UNDER ITHAKA’S BLUE SKY AGAIN

Now standing under Ithaka’s blue sky

Again, only the enemy to find,

This time at home, and, even worse, to lie

So much within, something still undefined,

He looks long, out to his familiar sea,

Searching it for some thing in himself lost,

While fearing finding it, this mystery

To mock his wiliness, ocean uncrossed.

Now he must begin the journey inward

And dare to see the man Kalypso saw

Among the swine, driven by lust, absurd,

To see husband and hero through the eyes

Of patient Penelope, without awe,

Of Achilles, as someone to despise. 

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

AMOUR DE LOIN

That distant, fetching look

     in her eyes,

that glint of perfect pleasure 

     deep within,

that hint of some forbidden

     secret, shared,

are captured in the glance she

     turns to me,

and then I see the phone-bud

     in her ear.

Rick Hite is professor emeritus of theater and communications at Virginia Wesleyan College. He has published plays, translations, and poetry in the U. S. and Spain, and he has had works produced both here and abroad.