Journeys within and journeys without

An odyssey is a long series of wanderings. Twenty years is a very long time. Even when I was a kid I thought, “What a long trip” Odysseus took. To give it some perspective, going with the family for a Saturday afternoon drive, eating dinner out and coming home at night felt like a very long day. I couldn’t imagine twenty years.

He could have skipped through the islands till he found his homeland, in a few days, weeks at most. Penelope, his faithful wife, was waiting for his return when everyone else assumed he was dead. Penelope was waiting, weaving and unraveling. Thinking she was a widow and available, her suitors were anxious for her to choose a new husband. She told them that when her weaving was done she’d choose. But at night, she renewed her connection to Odysseus by unraveling her work. The suitors never had a chance.

Some journeys are outward bound and you're moving toward your destination. Some are inward and you're remaining open to the possibility. 

The women remember

Ask them and they will tell you.

The women remember the air broken by a harsh sound.

They knew what they heard

were sounds they never should have known.

The crack of the date palms, the snap of the orange trees.

Before this, who knew the tearing sound that lemon trees make

as tanks rip them up and run them down?

 

One old woman grabbed a small branch from a fallen tree

as if she were yanking a child out of the earth’s mouth.

 that

always gave her shade in the summer, and of course, the fruit.

The shade was gone and it was not the end of a season.

But it was the end of the times she could rest there, sometimes

remember her mother, or hold her grandson on her lap.

This is where many generations of the women before her sat.

Women, always the vulnerable ones, women and the land.

To make people crazy and weak with grief.

Of course, this is what an army does on purpose.

Before this, only storms would dare take ancient fig groves down.

Will that old woman remember the fig trees or the violence?

Who will whisper the faint changes of the season to her

as the wind through the ancient groves once did?

Days of peace are days you sit with your friends and neighbors.

They are days when you pass around the bowl of fresh fruit

and see the sky through the lace of the leaves.

We stand here in quiet recognition of what happened

to this ancient grove and these women’s lives.

Who will whisper the changes in the seasons

as the winds through the ancient groves once did?

The women remember days of peace and wait for these days to come.