Ingratitude

The way was broader than a continent,
and he was as judicious as a king-
or queen-backed conqueror who reeked of rum.
Though forty, he was conscious of the spot
upon his forehead where the water scooped
up from the font first hit and where the first
sign of the cross was made in his defense.
On side streets or in fields, when he awoke
and felt the sun low in the east, he crossed
himself and rose, unsure which way led home.
He knew there was no way to tell his wife
the gods had blown him from his course again.
He thought of Siegfried’s wife who sewed
the cross on his tunic like a bull’s-eye,
which his enemy would aim for when the hero knelt
before the stream and cupped his hands to drink.
He wondered what his own wife might have sewn,
with good intentions, on his shirt that might have
broadcast the abiding weakness in his life.
Remembering that Thetis rashly dipped
Achilles in the River Styx and failed
to seal him from the arrow sprung by Fate,
he thought what more his own mom could have done
to have kept him from this long campaign,
to have steeled his organs and his loved ones
against the oddly satisfying fray.