A Late Surprise, and Young Telemachus

 After a spectacular butterfly summer, there has been very little action since the rains and winds of early autumn put a sudden end to the season. Even now, when we're enjoying a little taste of Indian summer (here, at least), there is little flying, apart from the indomitable whites, speckled woods and red admirals. I was certainly not expecting to see any butterflies as I trudged across the Beacon Park playing fields yesterday afternoon, having just dropped the youngest grandson off at Squirrels (the most junior division of the Scouting movement). Then, from nowhere, came a flash of unmistakable orange-yellow and there, flying a zigzag path at high speed – they're always on their way to somewhere else – was a (male) Clouded Yellow! My second of the year – which is one/two more than most years – and a glorious surprise, especially flying this late. I went on my way with an idiot grin on my face.
  But enough of butterflies. With the film of the Odyssey still being talked about – and, it is reported, a surge in sales of the book (in translation) – here is a poem on an Odyssean theme by Dick Davis. (Telemachus is the son of Odysseus, and the first four books of the Odyssey – the Telemachy – are devoted to his journeys in quest of his father. When Telemachus finally makes it back to Ithaca, he finds that Odysseus has got there before him. Father and son duly set about slaughtering the suitors of Penelope – but this poem, simple and elegant, is set before all that.)

Youth of Telemachus

It is a land he knows. White sunlight
Specifies each shrub and stone –
And as he moves his vacant sight
Restores him to the ways he's grown:

He is enclosed in reveries
No will can break, and where he goes
A child's unfinished fantasies
Dictate the paths that he will choose.

He rises in the dawn: the sun
Illuminates where he will pause
And where proceed: at his return
He sleeps and dreams his father's wars:

Until one evening he delays,
Past sunset, sunk in memory:
He sees the moon rise and he stays:
At night he scans the changing sea.