A Talisman

I didn’t know the details.
I feared the details.
I loved the details.

The details, said etymology,
were our first cuttings. De-

tailor, did you know
where you came from?
From taliare, to split:

talea, a stick
companionably unstuck.

Long enough to look
at the realities
of luck:

wishbones,
each to one’s own

taste of it, what’s enough.
In Sanskrit: talah, wine palm,
and in Greek: talis,

a marriageable girl.
Dividing /

divining back
as far and old as Thalna,
goddess of youth

to the Etruscans, fresh
as any branch begins as

some loose, unlikely
end of a tendril;
some cleave of a leaf.
___

In details lost and found,
there were days of games
and days of fasting

and although these
were the same days,

days of feasting
were interlaced like
so many flights of birds

in that certain composed,
but hurried, hunger.

How often was it content
to be contested, paradise?
Paradise rained

into failing soil?
Paradise evaporated?
Did it ever pick up?

Before starting over new
as a people, the Etruscans,

waiting 18 years in their old home,
Lydia, gathered half their number—
plus whatever wits they honed

from hungry days of dice—
and moved.
___

They say life is more than starting over.
Maybe it is, Sun.
Maybe it is, Moon on the pines,

your practiced light on dark,
silvery green needles

before there were leaves;
before leaving,
the common grace of nights and days

left to each. Left to search,
through founderings,

for findings,
whichever can be moved; removed;
replenished or replanted.
___

In the beginning of a history,
Herodotus told his story
of the Lydians

and their famine
and their wise ruler who decided

there should be games,
games to keep the peace in place
in the turmoil of  hunger.

Games on days
when food could not be served.

Playfulness and sustenance,
for however long, happily confused.
Herodotus himself didn’t know

that the Lydians were Etruscans
in their old life, before the move

to land they would be known,
and renowned, by. Mystery
finally solved, to the letter.

Mystery, all the same,
remains in its remains.

Herodotus,
would you be shocked
to know what DNA can say,

stretching back through hindsight,
all the way to wonder?

Source: Poetry (January 2020)