The Black-Sand Beach

A stretch of black sand on the Ithacan coast where the Phaeacian sailors lay Odysseus while he slept, set the gifts of Alcinous around him in the shapes of armor and tripods and gold cups, and then turned their ship and went home. He wakes with the world still spinning. Gray light. The smell of salt. His wrists no longer in motion. The land in front of him is veiled in mist and nothing in it speaks his name. He pulls himself up and begins to gather the gifts away from the tide line, the way a stranger picks up scattered debris on an unfamiliar shore. A shepherd appears on the slope above. The mist burns off. The shepherd is Athena. She tells him he is home. She tells him about the suitors. She lays her hand on his shoulder and turns his body into a beggar’s. The black sand is where the king becomes the beggar. The first soil of Ithaca he has touched in twenty years, and he cannot recognize it.