Athena is weary. She has been scheming and working on Odysseus’ behalf
to help him on his epic journey back home to Ithaca.
She fought beside him in the Trojan wars,
she sent a dream to Nausicaa to give her the idea of doing her washing
at the river on the day Odysseus landed at Phaeacia;
she gave him supernatural good looks to ensure Nausicaa would obtain a boat for him to return home;
she begged her father Zeus to help him,
‘Olympian Zeus have you no care for him in you lofty heart?’
She caused Calypso to release him after seven years of imprisonment on her island of erotic delights and persuaded her to give him the means to put to sea again.
She wants to get far away from the Homeric haunts of the Ionian Islands 
so she has come at last to Santorini
formed by a cataclysmic volcanic explosion
long before Homer told his tales to passers by.
No one knows her here and there is no trace left
of her stay beyond a little known path along the cliffs
where if you are observant you can see her foot prints.
Like the thousands who have come to this spectacular island
she watch its sunsets in awe.
She finds a cave long since abandoned by its inhabitants
and here she sleeps dreaming of the time when she might welcome Odysseus home.
Then as she feels the ground beneath her heave in yet another attempt to stop her,
by her angry Uncle Poseidon who hates Odysseus,
she knows she has to leave to continue her own Odyssey.
Before she goes she takes one more look at the sunset
that will become the hallmark of this island
in the centuries that follow drawing thousands
of modern travellers to the shores of this
magic place.
