When Penelope Knows

The smell of eucalyptus,
a bitterness she inhales with each billow
of rasping outbursts from the Great Hall.
And what will unfold if he doesn’t return,
if their mingled embers in the olive tree bed
extinguish? Which monster below will be
her master? She touches the shroud almost frayed
with the work of weaving and unweaving.
Next to the loom, she leans on the cold stone sill—
the wrinkled dark sea her view and to the east
the seven hills that roll to Laertes’ home
unseen but still a beacon.
Will he live to see his son?
           And just as she is thinking son,
Telemachus sneezes, its heft thundering upstairs.
A sneeze! O gods! she laughs, her first in years.
She unhinges from sorrow, holds her own
wrist for there is no other skin to touch.
He is near, dear Athena? You’ve carried him home?
All the waiting she has swallowed.
Her sleepless bones—wildfire.

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After years in the classroom, Sarah Dickenson Snyder now carves in stone, sculls on the Connecticut River, and rides her bike. Travel opens her eyes. She has five poetry collections: The Human Contract (2017), Notes from a Nomad (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2018), With a Polaroid Camera (2019), and Now These Three Remain (nominated for the Massachusetts Book Awards 2023), and To Eve (Nixes Mate Review 2026). Several poems have been nominated for Best of Net and Pushcart Prizes. Work is in Rattle, Verse Daily, and RHINO.