Atalanta

1. MOUNTAINSIDE
Iasus wished for a son
so banished his new-born daughter —
no incestuous pangs for him …
Didn't he know
that infants exposed on mountainsides
often survive and cause a lot of trouble?
As Atalanta will.
Just now she is being suckled
by a bear sent by Artemis
who has plans for her —
that she will be
a huntress
like herself:
cruel, free and singular.
That's the blueprint.
2. THE CALEDONIAN BOAR
This huntress does not belong in this hunt.
Her arrow makes the first mark on the boar.
Meleager, who kills the boar outright,
would honour her. The other men oppose.
It is then the killing really starts:
Plexippus, Toxeus, followed by others …
False honour feeds itself on blood,
grows fat and murderous as the boar.
This is the marauder they do not want to hunt.
3. FAMILY REUNION
Tracking her father down,
she stands at last before him.
He quickly demands she marry —
repeating history, more or less.
Huntress and patriarch:
two unteachable people
staring each other out.
Who will win?
She who quarries
or he who discards?
4. THE RACE
Always, she raced against herself, her will
and body arrowing to that fixed point, the end.
The suitors fell away like random thoughts,
like dead wishes, fell away behind her.
But when Melanion came to challenge her,
she saw the golden heat around his body,
still saw it as she ran ahead, wrenching
her mind away from that fixed point, the end.
Three apples spun and glittered past her,
drew her to the side. When she resumed,
she had lost the thread connecting her
to separateness, to singularity.
Now he is the goal she runs towards,
he is the golden heat around her body.
5. SANCTUARY
Now a lover,
she serves Aphrodite,
no longer Artemis,
has entered her own opposite.
In Zeus's shrine,
she and Melanion lie,
exchanging bodies, selves,
honouring no other thing.
The gods banish them
to the wilds where,
imprisoned in lion bodies,
they stalk each other.
Always, before,
alone, aware …
Now this fusion,
this forgetting.
6. WATERFALL
Before it falls,
the water is held
in a chalice of rock:
unshadowed, still.
As it falls,
it is a pure line,
a sound like breathing.
And so swift.
The water merges
with a pool masked
by tree shadows, etched
by the wind's light.
This is the place that,
partnered and alone,
knowing and unknowing,
she has learnt to see.
She is of this setting,
her spirit is rooted here
beyond all changing forms:
at home, singular.