"Ogygia" (Inspired by Homer's Odyssey)

It's very peaceful here.

You can almost hear the silence between each wave.

I remember the last time I saw my son's face.

I was driving the plough full speed, yoked to a mule and a milk-cow, sowing the furrow with salt. The captain of all the Achaians had come to call me to war, only to find a madman unfit even to plant crops.

Or a scoundrel. Heroes dream of dying with glory in battle. I dream of my wife and baby son.

Agammemnon threw my boy down in the furrow; I turned the team aside. "The man's sensible enough," he said, "for battle, anyway."

Ten years we raged and rotted before that wall. No force could win those gates, but heroes would rather die than concede defeat. Ten years it took, countless feasts for carrion crows, until pride bent. At last, heartsick, plague-humbled, they tried my way. The horse was not honorable, but it worked. We feasted in Troy that night, divided the women and the loot, and sailed at dawn.

Ten ships turned for Ithaca.

Not that we didn't stop along the way to raid and serve notice to Troy's allies, lest they think to follow us back and try the same. It was fine pickings, until we came to the land where the cyclops made his home.

That was a fertile island, rich in harbors, but no ships nor cities nor crops from shore to shore. I put in to see what kind of men lived there, learn what alliances I might forge.I brought our best wine and picked men.We found a mighty cave full of rich cheeses and fell to.

The man was bigger than a man, wheel-eyed, monstrous. His door was a mighty millstone, too big too budge once he rolled it shut. Harmless he seemed at first, a rustic giant who couldn't be bothered with guests until he milked his sheep. Then he turned to us. Two men got their brains dashed out on the stone. When I called on the gods, reminded him of the duty due a host, he scoffed and said for guest-gift he would spare me until the last.

I can still hear the sound of the red-hot spit we twisted in his eye, and his bellows as we fled the cave the next morning when he let the flocks out. "Noman has blinded me!" he roared, and the other cyclopes mocked and would not come to help him.

I hid my real name until we were far out in the harbor. There I made my mistake. A hero must own his name, after all. So I shouted it back to shore, vaunting. The cyclops heard me and called upon his father-- how were we to know he was the son of the sea-god? -- to curse us to the last man.

The curse came quickly.

We stayed next with old Aeolus, Keeper of the Winds. He was a fine host, and we spent a merry month in his halls. At parting he gifted me with a bag of all the ill winds tied up tight, and bid me keep them locked up until I was safely home. I guarded it all the way. Within sight of Ithaca's blessed highlands, I fell asleep by the mast. My men, thinking riches must be inside, cut the strings. Out flew the winds. Away we flew on the wide open sea, all the way back to Aeolus: one ship now instead of a fleet, and I never saw the others my good comrades again. No gift would he give me the second time, but recoiled from us as accursed and drove us away.

That's when we found Circe, or she found us. A wild island, we didn't think anyone lived there at all. My hunting party never came back; they became her prey. Gods were with me for once, and with an herb to combat her magic spells I kept my head. She found kindness with a sword drawn at her throat. My men were returned to me from beast-shape, and she turned gracious hostess. A year we lingered there, while she gave me good advice and pleasant nights indeed.

With Circe's counsel, we passed the next perils safely. I will not speak of the lore I learned at the mouths of Hades or from the sweet voices of the deadly Sirens. Some things are not meant for mortal ears.

Scylla and Charybdis waited next. No point in telling my men what was to come, although the witch had warned me well. Six men or all; that was my choice to lose. I told my sailors to hug the lefthand shore by the roaring cliff, away from the whirlpool and the rocks. The crash of water covered the sound of the beast's bellows until she struck, taking six men with six heads and devouring them before our horrified eyes.

So at last we came-- as Circe had warned us-- to the island of the Cattle of the Sun, her divine father. Now misfortune caught up with us again. We were becalmed. I kept my men under strict orders not to touch the freely-roaming herd, but while I slept, hunger and greed again got the better of them. The meat lowed like cows in pasture when they had it turning on the spit. That woke me, but it was too late.

When at last we set forth again on a favoring wind, we did not smell the storm until it was on us with a gale like the Titans versus the gods. Lightning split my boat in two, and all of us were tossed to the wave.

And that would be my end, I thought, clinging to the oar. No more to see my little son grown to manhood. No more to see my wife, fair with wit to match my own. What use were wits against the pitiless sea?

I should have died at Troy.

I awoke on sand, alone, gulls pecking at my feet.

Seven years I have spent now, shipwrecked on this tiny speck in the midst of the wine-dark sea.

It's very peaceful. You can almost hear the silence between each wave.

I+ used to be a bard, a storyteller in a medieval reenactment society. My expertise wasn't the Middle Ages, however, but the ancient world. I would sometimes recite Homer in translation. My "Ogygia" piece was not a direct translation of anything in Homer's Iliad, but a creative summary of Odysseus' adventures, re-imagined and retold in his own voice.

The photos are from my own odyssey to Greece in 2005.