descent

The Etruscan museum is full of treasures like this Medusa.  Michael Grant in his book Roman Myths notes that the Etruscans failed to understand heroes or sympathise with the concept and therefore in their art tended to represent them as deities - gods and goddesses - sometimes winged (1971: p. 193).

Medusa is not winged but she bears the mark of her ancient past in her snake hair. She's a healer and extraordinarily powerful.

I've also been reading about the beginnings of Rome and a number of sibyls are implicated in its origin, specifically the Cumaean Sibyl whom Aeneas visited after leaving Carthage - Dido dead by suicide - and before going on to the place that will become Rome.

descent

the call

that hollow sound of Cumaea

I was here before

thousands of years ago

your hundred mouths

shouting

words frothed at the edge

of my mouth

the journey looming

flight into the unknown

descent into

the dark thighs of your cave

my hair snake-wreathed

Etruscan Medusa

speaking with a hundred voices

the sibilant hiss of prophecy

seizure grasped

she flails at vanishing memory

bruised she rises from darkness

almost misses the plane