THE ISLE OF SIRENS

We first found them in the school library and the gymnasium,
They set up booths on coarse carpet and polished floor
Promising that he who listened to them would be wiser for it.

This was still a time before prosperity became mythology. 

Our fathers and our mothers did not teach us 
To put warm wax in our ears or to tie ourselves to the mast.

We threw ourselves overboard. We tread water
For four years, or six years, or eight years, 
Or eight years with another seven years of residency,
And when we finally reached them,
When we finally pulled ourselves gasping onto the rock,
When we scraped the salt of sunburnt skin, 
When we begged them to give us the wisdom they promised, 
The Sirens, in their cheap suits handed us these papers:
This paper tells everyone that you listened to the song,
This paper tells everyone how much you paid for it.

And that we would continue to pay for it all our lives.

We looked around, and we found 
There was not a breath of wind or a ripple of water,
And in the doldrums around the Isle of the Sirens, 
We found nobody who would help us:

The sea, still and silent and empty, far into the horizon.

C.S. Crowe is a storyteller from the Southeastern United States with a love of nature and a passion for writing. He believes stories and poems are about getting there, not being there, and he enjoys those tales that take their time getting to the point.