Athene: Prize-winner in Bishops Castle Arts Festival Poetry Competition

by Sharon Ashton



Her beauty is teasing-strange,
enticing without promise of sex
as she plays with men and their myths.
Shape-shifter for Odysseus,
but no glance back as Marsyas  
is peeled to strawberry flesh.

Her eyes are the grey
of skies before lightening cracks, 
armour dulled by rain,
oceans and pools in winter, 
veils of women mourning
and the ashes they scatter.

Her flesh, beneath armour, is moon-pale,
and when she undresses
in evening’s shifting light,
she is stroked only by owls
dropping soft about her;
turning all her nights to autumn.