Stones of Greece
A jar atop my bookshelf
With a label for Greek honey
Lid screwed over sea stone souvenirs
Layered and sealed tight.
Smooth grey stones cut with white
Like painstrokes pushing out
Taken footsteps from Zakros
On the Eastern shore of Crete
From gentle waves lapping at ruins
Of a palace gone before Homer conceived.
Pockmarked red and black crumbles
Some rough and some so fine
Taken beneath red cliffs stacked tall
Jutting over a crowded beach
On Santorini where I sat
Watching ice-blue waters dance.
Light stones with pink veins
Smooth and warm like skin
Taken a walk from downtown Mykonos
On an empty slice of beach
Where no crowds gawked and gathered
But only white big gulls.
Rocks golden, jagged, white
Faceted and glittering
Taken from the dirt on barren hill
Of Naxos’ temple to Apollo
Where I’d slept shadowed beneath the ruins
Kissed by sun and breeze.
And shining colored glass
Of brown and blue and green
Taken from beneath the temple
To Poseidon on Cape Sounion
Watching the sun set from a distance
On the cliffs where Aegeus fell.
Stones all that the Mediterranean
Broke and swallowed and spit onto beach
Each with a story to tell.
