Poetry

The light filtering through the shutters
picks up a little of their blue
on its predawn passage
into the white-walled
beige, marbled floor bedroom
sun rises swifter than at home
not quite the tropics
but tantalisingly close to Africa

The sun rises scarlet and
all-consuming of the sky
– silhouetting the island
dark purple across the bay
Red sky in the morning
doesn’t translate to Crete
where most days in this lockdown Winter
that is not like our Winter
begin with a red curtain raiser.
Soon blinding light floods the sky, the Bay
the mountains delicately bluing their shadows
and highlighting their tops
before the rising heat filters
everything with glimmering heat haze.

We sit in the shade of the terrace
beneath the deep green leaves
of the carob tree and count
the millipedes that have climbed
the delicately off-white walls
in the night dash, reaching for
who knows what insectile heaven…
A fallen comrade
dark brown in desiccation
is moving sideways
in unlikely reanimation
until we see that his body
is being carried back to the nest
by a tiny black ant a tenth his size
we sit astounded by this feat
but don’t forget to film it
for posterity or a rainy day reminder
when we are one day returned to England.

I walk down to town for market day
mixing with brightly dressed
younger women and black wrapped
older ones in widows weeds
with only an occasional male
to keep me company.
The azure sea is only feet away

The couple who live on the yacht
just out in the bay
are here, and we chat in the shade
of a vegetable stall loaded with
piles of black glossy aubergines
and ripe red tomatoes next to
bunches of wild greens, picked
from among the hundred or so
Crete proffers – if you know
what you are looking for.
Cyrille’s once blonde hair
is salt and pepper
tied back in a ponytail
their clothes too, faded with
exposure to sun and saltwater.

I spend some time chatting
with the banana man
who sells nothing else
and whose English is good
enough for a conversation.
I am English and so not averse
to discuss the weather –
he talks of the recent
thunderstorms whose hailstones
devastated his neighbours’ crops
but divinely spared his
while Barbara and I had been
enjoying the night of sturm und drang
from the safety of our covered balcony
the crackle and crash of it
ricocheting and rambling around
the mountains and – the ultraviolet
flashes turned into dark sound.

Walking back up the long hill
to the village, I pass the
white and ochre, black and grey
patchwork trunks of the group of gum trees
foreigners too – all the way from Australia
these strangers who fit in so well
people believe them to be native.

Home again in the cool of the flat
and after a siesta
I pick a bright yellow lemon
from the tree within reach of our balcony
and squeeze it into dark green olive oil
to dress the salad of tomatoes
and cucumbers I hauled up
from the market – dot it with
tiny Cretan olives – mostly grown for oil
and look out on the bonfires
ranged around in the olive groves
as farmers burn the prunings
of their trees.

Night falls quickly
colours fade to black…

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, lillian in OpenLinkNight invites us to submit a poem of our choice for Open Link Night…