Athens
Release the shutters, let the pale
light enter with the winter chill
from lowered skies and concrete roof-
tops spiked with steel antennae.
This honeycomb of rooms is warm,
the walls unmoved despite reports of ships
lost with all hands in lethal seas.
There will be days replete with sun,
facades washed by the sky's
spring tide, sluicing through apertures
in masonry, flooding the dingy streets.
There have been nights when the traffic
howled like furies, sullen, five floors
down, or drummed with the dull monotony
of monsoon rains; nights I would start
at curlew calling, piercing my sleep
with siren's wail, or lie alert for sounds
of possums crossing corrugated iron.
I open the shutters onto the balcony,
sensing the season's change, the passing
of December's darker days. Alarmed,
a speckled pigeon darts from near
my feet; a sparrow scrapes a dry
crust with her beak.