The Greatest

Midnight Stroll ink/gouache on cotton rag paper by Karin Goeppert

HELLAS (2)

I didn’t swallow the fly

and I’m glad. Principle

as much as disgust. And the smell

of pines I will never forget,

like the last words of an old friend,

almost gone, one way or the other,

about what she will never forget.

Temple of Poseidon nothing but

a few chunks of marble embedded in dirt.

Across the gulf

the lemon groves of Galatas

in a grid of irrigation gutters

the mountains behind them

sharp-edged

like unearthed implements

from some epic blood-bath.

Tree-climbing goats.

American students puking over the side of a party boat.

Who wasn’t having fun?

The light told me of white cubic shapes, differing shades of blue,

how shade itself had differing shades of blue

the light in Greece

an authority on many subjects

saturating my glass of bathtub retsina

in the kitchen/living room of our

impoverished landlord & -lady

a fly drowning inside it.

You tried to make me drink it all down

so as not to insult the hospitality of these fine people.

Even then you were a force to reckon with,

implement sometimes—the force—manage a little

but never rule:

years of applied technique

trial and error

most kinks

massaged out

with just enough residual weirdness

to keep things interesting

or a little surprise at breakfast: did she say that?

Hmmm, she’s still got it. 

We were twenty-something

back then. Didn’t know asses from elbows. But

so close to happy it couldn’t help but touch us.