Zeus Returns, Briefly, By Eric Pinder

 

Zeus scowls down one summer Sunday

afternoon at a town unconcerned with a grimace

from the sky. He glowers. He glares.

He strives to blanch the tame blue blush

of pristine July. His frown intensifies.

A single wet drop of Olympian spittle

descends through contortions

of cumuli.

 

His grumble exacts no tribute

save an idle upward glance and the half-hearted curtsy

of my umbrella. Every other passerby ignores the once-lord

of weather’s unheralded return. No one asks

him for an alibi.

 

The braised rage of the sun

pierces a cloud in two places—

his unblinking eyes. Blind

to being so scrutinized, vacationers

occupy beaches and benches, luxuriating

in the leisure of their waning weekends while

high above the trimmed green park,

intermittent Frisbees fly.

 

Only I spot Zeus

observing the frolics of fearless

apostates until the sharp breeze foretold

on TV by pinstriped oracles with Hollywood smiles

shears off his beard with such precipitous

vigor and smothers

his final, silent,

harmless goodbye.

Eric Pinder is the author of Counting Dinos, If All the Animals Came Inside, How to Share with a Bear, and other books about animals and nature. He teaches in New Hampshire at a small college in the woods, a few miles down the road less traveled.

Cover: Amanda Bergloff

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