What Poseidon Is Telling Us

A ll the gods like to stir things up every now and then. Apollo gives unwanted gifts. Zeus throws tantrums, flings thunderbolts, assaults boys and women. But no one can mess with an island civilization quite like the god of the sea. Poseidon loves this part of the job. All it takes is a little shake of the waters at the surface and the people lose their minds. They pray, they call on heroes, they start sacrificing anything they think might please him. His wife loathes this, starts hollering at him whenever the bloated, fish-bitten corpses of drowned horses and cattle begin to drift down to the underwater palace. What, she asks (not unreasonably), do they think we’re going to do with these? Once, the people tried chaining a naked princess to a rock by the sea, which struck even Poseidon as a little weird. He allowed her to be rescued by some hero who probably never shut up about it for the rest of his short life.

Men need to do crazy things for immortality. Gods don’t. Time moves more slowly when you’re divine. Deep in the dark waters, Poseidon often finds himself behind the times. It takes information many years to worm its way to the depths of the ocean. Sometimes he hears something that makes him rush to the surface, only to find that all those concerned have died. As he descends beneath the waves again, Poseidon watches the constellations blur above the shallow waters overhead and then disappear from view. The stars shine bright over the midnight sea, patterned with stories of heroes long gone.

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