Alex Howe, "Bloodstained Feathers"

Leda, with bloodstained nails

and feathers clasped in fists,

walks away from the lakeside. 

A few bent reeds,

Crushed rushes, 

A white corpse;

Her triumphant head held high. 

The hard-won bruised blotches 

that adorn her pale skin 

will deepen to purple, 

to green, to yellow,

then fade into the ether, traceless,

painless to the touch. 

Resilience not new hatched from within, 

some inception by brute force, but 

Built into her bones, 

gifted there by her mother, 

fortified by her own fair hands. 

Thus the great wings that had beaten 

the air into submission

then turned their gaze toward Leda

now lie in tatters, 

sullied with mud for their crime. 

Olympus falls to its knees

with a thud dense with significance

as a helpless beak trembles and quakes,

then stills. 

The shell of that most royal bird

will be claimed by the earth,

granted only the natural honours it deserves:

Flesh feeding the lowliest of creatures,

Rib cage open to the sky

for the breeze to dance around,

Webbed feet melting out of existence,

Beetles burrowing behind the broken bill,

Eyes cherry-picked by airborne kin;

New life will burgeon

from the ruins of its breast. 

Life that will be gentler. 

That won’t seek to overcome. 

Olympus crumbles, leaderless,

like it’s made of breadcrumbs 

for birds to feast upon,

a new gap in a Greek skyline,

In which something new could be built. 

From the dust emerges 

a humanity unafraid of that divine seat,

Free from celestial visitation,

or noble violence. 

Leda regrets the temporary bruising,

The brief map of scratches that led back

to memories she’d rather forget, 

gone now except in the mind,

The bloodstains she had to scrub to remove,

and nothing else.