In the Sphere of Common Duty

Telemachus did well, I think, to stay,

in spite of what his father might have said

about the promise written in the stars.

The island was all right, nothing fantastic,

but he called it home, then made it home

by taking on himself the fond discharge

of homely duties—taking out the trash,

deciding which of nature’s green-leaved things

one should call weeds and separate to mulch,

accepting that it’s infinitely harder

to stay put than rush away. Ulysses would have

loved the grand illusion that adventures hang

on precipices, passions, clashing rocks:

the crude near-misses of the manly life;

he went off to war, as men still do,

for reasons the community allowed

were just and not just his. But once the Trojans

had been done to death: What then? What then?

“Boys will be boys,” they always say.

Think of him, Telemachus, who loved the stars

no less for watching them from where he stood.