Argonath

Argonath

Elizabeth Genovise

Argonath pulses in the glass orb of memory:
Tiny boats on a sapphire river, surging through a ravine
Toward a passage guarded by ancient kings.
Peering in from without,
Like children at snow-globes, we admire the craftsman
Who shaped the clay. A lovely bauble, we say,
(Smiling, faineant, afraid). We set it on the shelf
To deliquesce, like us.
Or else, having sinned enough to hate,
We envy those tiny men
Destined for Gondor’s challenging shores
And so again like children we shatter the glass,
Wrench the figurines from their quest
And shutter them in a drawer to molder.

I have a bureau peopled with these toy soldiers.

For beyond my imagining is the gap between the kings,
The navigation of currents unknown.
And how many are lost when the boats overturn?
I see them like a caravan in the dark,
Forgotten and unmarked, and I
Return my ticket as Ivan returned his,
Respectful, but refractory.
And yet, when I tilt the orb to the light,
I sometimes hear Eliot, who found it all satisfactory—
The way the blue clay ends so abruptly at the glass,
The hyaline mystery of each man’s chance.

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Elizabeth Genovise
Poet & Writer

Elizabeth is an O. Henry Prize winner and her stories have appeared in The Southern Review, Pembroke Magazine, Cimarron Review, Southern Indiana Review, and many other journals. She has published three collections of stories. You can find her work here: elizabethgenovisefiction.org

Photography by Alex Kalligas