He came here looking for the blind prophet. Through a hole he came down from the living, from his way by which he and the ways of his men were lost, again. Not to admit any wrong, not to admit the penance due those who anger the gods, but I knew my son. His stubborn stance. I was there with the other dead mothers and our stance was reaching from where we waited below the land of the living beneath where they burned the false claims they would make in slaying other sons––and our daughters, too, in the name of their stakes and how high they made them, where the air thinned. I knew my son and I saw his desperation in that heat. See me, I called to him. He looked up and I saw it on his face. Mother, he said.
He still knew the word. Yes, I said. Now go, I said to him, from this fire while you still live.
It was too hot and too loud for him to hear more though I meant to remind him back to the life he knew before he knew to wave flags above the graves of other mothers. Where he was barefoot and fed before he thought to scorch the land he meant to take. To add, take this body, son, that I gave you, and return it to the living earth.
***
Anticlea is the mother of Odysseus, who encounters her son in the underworld where he has come to find the blind prophet, Tiresias, to tell him the way back home.
Love this one
Thank you, Jeff.