Circles poem

Upon the craggy edge of Aeaea’s isle,
Where wild thyme tangled in salt-stained air,
A goddess dwelled in solitude and style,
Her laughter bright, her gaze a subtle snare.

Circe, daughter of the golden sun,
With midnight hair and eyes like emerald flame,
Spoke to the wolves and tamed each one,
A song on wind, a half-forgotten name.

Her house was wreathed in mandrake’s bloom,
With marble floors and lions at her feet,
Inside, a thousand spells would loom,
In every breath, enchantment bittersweet.

She wandered gardens, palms stained green,
A silver sickle slicing sacred root;
She whispered to the plants unseen,
Her power grew in silence, absolute.

Sailors came—brave Odysseus among them—
With weary eyes and hunger in their veins.
She welcomed them with wine and song,
Her magic weaving softly through their brains.

One sip, one smile, and men became as beasts,
Swine and wolves and creatures of the field.
Yet not from malice did she cast her feast;
Her heart, though guarded, rarely ever healed.

For Circe knew the cruelty of men,
The promises that vanish with the tide.
She’d seen the gods betray again and again,
She’d wept for all the things the Fates denied.

Yet in her hall, not every soul was lost—
She let the clever captain keep his mind,
Saw in him the pain, the heavy cost,
Of longing for a home he’d yet to find.

They spoke by lamplight, voice to voice,
Of gods and monsters, memory and fate.
She told him, “Every woman makes her choice:
To trust, to fight, to love, or simply wait.”

Odysseus lingered, gentle, unafraid;
She healed his men and sent them on their way.
But in her heart, a whispered ache remained:
The island’s hush, the closing of the day.

Years rolled by, as seasons waxed and waned,
Her legend grew, a shadow on the sea.
Some called her witch, with power unrestrained,
Some called her wise, and others, mystery.

But Circe, in her solitude, became
More than the stories told by frightened men.
She learned her strength was not a thing of shame,
But something wild, and beautiful, and then—

She walked the shore, a goddess and a girl,
Her feet bare on the stones and drifting sand.
She watched the moon’s reflection softly swirl,
Her future open, vast as any land.

For though the world might fear her magic art,
Or whisper tales of monsters and of wrongs,
She knew the power lying in her heart—
To choose, to change, to sing her own true songs.

So on the isle where thyme and myrtle grow,
Where wolves at dusk still listen for her call,
Circe lives on, in legend’s gentle glow,
A goddess, yet a woman, after all.