The Oracle Of Sappho At Delphi

She is an oracle
I turn to every 20 years;
to buoy me,
to collect me,
turn me into life.
To say —
no woman will ever love me,
no earthling love for the poet.
Therefore I best believe in
and lean into life;
find the love of life within this.
Her eyes dance at me,
at my spirit’s dancing.
Again, she calls me.
She could be
the Oracle at Delphi.
She was once that.
I’m certain.
I was there with her.
Priestesses.
Priestess sisters.
She says my weight is cosmic.
No woman will ever love you.
You were made for this world.
The healer… diviner.

I hear her.
The tune is unknown.
I hear her.
The Oracle turns coldly,
a reminder;
we make of life and also of others
what we will,
what we can.

The unloving, I don’t hear them.
I have work to do.
Long journey.

Sacred. I love her for her eyes
of stars I look into
and this reforms

the renaissance,

a renaissance of women.
My always lone-woman self.
I take up the call to still
believe in.

I am the sanctuary.
She is my oracle.
She reiterates —
suicide is not one of
my medicines,
nor my spells.

I am saved, so are my lovers.

There is so much work to do.
She does big work.
The legends speak of
the ravines of lost lovers.

Crags Of Delphi In Kohl’s

I’m going into Kohl’s
at seven thirty seven A.M.

I’m going into Kohl’s.

Have I not lived?
Am I alive?
Is this what I do with
my partitioning?

The fluorescent lights
split
thoughts in my brain.

I was once alive again.

A bird.
In sky.

There’s a song beyond sky.
A song without.
A song within.

I go into Kohl’s but still
I live,
my eyes on last year’s
Super Bowl sweatshirt,
a pretzel bite dissolved in
my mouth,
memories of my vanished father,
visions of the crags of Delphi
from the air.

– Poetry by W.T. tuqMairtin