Underworld
The book belonged to my cousin.
A relic of her childhood
it was thick and heavy.
Greek legends,
she told me,
myths and fantasies,
gods and goddesses,
not quite fairy stories
and not many pictures,
not enough to interest me,
the eight year old me,
so we both thought.
But then it fell open
and so entranced me
that I was afraid
to look
at the dark
fearsome picture,
the god of the underworld,
a king and his queen
both dark as night.
I closed it quickly,
then opened it
just as quickly
again and again.
I did this each time I visited
just to feel the pleasure of the fear.
She gave it to me eventually,
sacrificed her book to my fear
which wore away
with familiarity.
But the book remained,
so did the underworld
and its dark god.
©2022 Lynn White All rights reserved.
Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud ‘War Poetry for Today’ competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Capsule Stories, Light Journal and So It Goes. Find Lynn at:
https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077