Epic


Three booths down
at the Chinese buffet
sat Beowulf.

Hair, flaxen;
skin, corrugated;
eyes, cerulean (flecked with brine);
his essence imposing, burnished, severe and commanding
(even when hunched over crab legs).

An Anglo-Saxon warrior in t-shirt and jeans;
out of place and time,
apparition and archetype all at once
corporeal String Theory and living Literature
materialized in a single skipped heartbeat.

Not so much sculpted as hewn,
his bulk and heft evinced
snapping sinew and cataclysmic combat—
an image borne not of aerobics and Évian
but by preternatural victories wrenched from the maw of Doom.

His aspect, wholly planes and angles;
nothing more than straight lines required
for authentic rendering.

I, not given to staring, stared.

Simultaneously emasculated and vindicated,
comparatively effete,
(having fought only to bring words to life),
with chopsticks breathlessly poised over cooling Chow Fun,
I vainly sought plausible justifications—social survival strategies—
should he interrupt his gnawing
to return my admiring gaze.

After a long while,
he rose to return to the feast table—
towering, immutable,
mythic in his gait;
striding purposefully across the ages
to plunder and devour.

As I regarded with awe the fluid sinews
of a bronzed, scarred forearm—
as he deftly severed the claws of steamed sea monsters—
the long-abandoned Herot of my imagination regained its hero
and I became the anonymous Scylding scop
heralding Hrothgar's legacy for the ages.

Toying coyly with a limp rice noodle,
I was pondering immortality when
azure eyes met mine,
glowered
and dismissed my
envious intelligence.

Time folded, suspended
as he grunted primordial awareness—
then resumed
gorging on Grendel.