Gary Margolis: Visiting Poet

         for the Midland School in Los Olivos

No one told me I would be sitting

across the table from Deyanira, number

two wife of Hercules, the name her parents

assigned her. Sitting in her classroom

at the foot of Grass Mountain,

a dry Olympus.  Where the gods

wear masks of spiders and snakes,

the dead drum their Chumash bones.

No one gave me a heads up, across the road

supplicants still come to the gates

of Neverland, to leave notes to his

ghost, songs of allegations and love.

Everything that happened that was done.

Isn’t a poem where we name horses

and women, where a goddess is saved

from rape by a god? Blood is

a river, even in this drought.

I want to assign you, too, a line you can

dream on and then write.

You can bring to class tomorrow

when I am gone. Imagine you were

named for a goddess like Deyanira

gazing out the window, thinking

of that boy across the road, that young

man, writing his note, honoring the living

dead, hat-tilted, one-gloved, dancing

his moon walk.

Copyright 2017 Gary Margolis

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A vineyard in Los Olivos, California