Skeletons of houses litter the landscape
Ribbons of road ease slowly, up
Then down, reeling around
The pine green hillsides
Innocent as a virgin’s thigh.
Mountains like small breasts'
Heave and swell
Under the bellowing clouds
Which caress them gently
Like a new mother her first son
Crystal waters undulate to shore
Rattle white pebbles smooth
As a hustler's midnight lie,
Salt cracks on bare chested paperback afternoon
Diving belles and trunk-clad boys
Like milk white flotsam
And mahogany jetsam
litter the beach on a day when
Youth's currency is as good as mine
When we are all paupers
Kneeling at mother nature's door
Begging for forgiveness for ignoring
All her calls.
A solemn boat bobs to the horizon,
An old man snags a fish,
Small, silvery penance for patience
On green fern harbour wall
Where weekend sailors drop anchor
Where locals reclaim tavernas
Lost once again in card game revelry
As chatter of foreign tongues
Become a whisper,
Where an orthodox priest in black,
Bends his grey beard into car window
Where silent streets forgive everything.
As night’s cloak falls, discarded
Over land which spawned religious legend
Zeus' rage roars eloquently, casting
Electric arcs across charcoal sky
Silhouetting slate sea and land,
Building wind whips trees which bend
To their new master.
Rain explodes off half built roads
Illuminated by car headlight beams.
This island, which witnessed atrocities
By marauding colonising armies,
Earthquakes which shook soil and soul,
Left boxes full of grief and ruins,
Is now ready to pull the curtain
On another international invasion:
The last flight is Monday,
Everything closed Sunday,
Each visitor a pinker shade of pale,
Packed, waiting for cut-cost aeroplane,
Like condemned men to return us,
To old cold rain misery of Blightly,
From wence we came.
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