Helen

For every spotlit myth
there are a million shadows.
Desire gained Helen the privilege
of walking free, in any place,
among unseen women subject
to hate, misuse.
Now, after a royal marriage,
a headstrong lover, a war,
what will be left to her?
Native wit teaches the lesson
that age will enforce:
she knows their ultimately
embodied woman is a ghost,
that time breaks down
the most flawless image,
cracking its smoothness.
Each dawn she walks alone
to the sea, steps into
flesh-pricking coolness.
Breathing slowly, she wades
against the tide, then,
at her own moment, enters
that flux, that tension,
her body poised, moving freely,
inside the wave.