Setting out while birds still greet
the morning with ecstatic notes
I linger on the pontoon
as the workers fill the City Cat,
thankful for an idle day,
waiting for the crowd to thin,
another ferry to come in,
to travel by the slowest route.
The mangroves exchange topaz fire
with ripples of refracted light
that comes as sun's first radiance
clutches at the low levee.
I watch the swifts alighting
playfully on docking river craft,
diving in the shallows, darting,
shaking off the spray.
The mangroves shimmer with fake flame
as if the tide ignited them.
I cross the river by the bridge,
delighting in my idleness.
*
The Greek cafe, the balcony,
the sweet frappe, the olive tree:
a world away from what I know,
the jukebox plays rembetiko.
Two ageing gentlemen from Rhodes
expatiate on politics,
address me graciously in Greek:
I cross the language barrier,
stumbling on thresholds overgrown
since last I tended them,
heart racing as it recognises
interludes, familiar rooms.
It's so long since I passed this way,
paths marked by vowels and consonants,
streets that feed into my veins
and arteries and consciousness.
- Where did you live?
- In Athens, near the Theatre of Dionysos.
- Malista.
From word to phrase to theme,
charmed names to conjure with.
The voices grow more voluble,
the skeins of story draw me in,
guiding me towards a sea
whose legends are unquenchable.
I follow roads down to the port
- O Thalassaki, wait for me!
A ferry beckons me aboard
before the morning dims.