The Oracle

I wrote something (everyone’s asleep after lunch), and it’s not a poem. An Oracle story. Fiction blurring into fact.

The Oracle

She stands in the cave mouth, gazing down at the sea, blue, glittering. On the sea is a white-sailed boat. In the boat is a man, black-bearded, with a request. She is a mouth nothing more to the man, who is nothing more than a black beard to her. The cave yawns; the white sail approaches.
He ties up the boat, reaches inside for two white doves. Their wings beat feebly. She never asks for this, but they do it anyway. Nothing for nothing. She would have them let the birds fly, but they only understand death. What price would they have paid if there was no shedding of white-feathered blood?
She sings a wordless song to calm the frightened birds. She can do no more. Between hers, and the world of men is an ocean, a night sky, a towering wall.
The blood flows, and black-beard is satisfied. He asks his question and she replies. It is a riddle. She has a limitless store. He will work it out to his own satisfaction. Only she knows it means nothing.
He leaves, black-bearded, white-sailed, confident. But aren’t they all? She wonders at the lives they lead, black-beard’s mother, his wife, sisters, his daughters. She wonders if he ever dreams of the volcano simmering beneath his confident tread, how his mother, wife, sisters and daughters hold it on a leash. For now.
If he did, he would never ask her to explain the meaning of such a dream. He would have forgotten it before morning, a wisp of cloud mist, a foolish fancy, as irrelevant as the cry of a child in the night.
She smiles to herself, a wry smile. If only he understood that there is nothing more relevant than the cry of a child in the night, the beating wings of things that do not want to die, the strong hand of a loving woman, perhaps the volcano would not have to be unleashed.