Poet Victoria Crawford wanders internationally in location and in words and currently lives in Thailand. She often shares her poem offerings in journals such as Cargo Lit, Postcard Poetry and Prose, Poetry Pacific, and Hawaii Pacific Review.
The longest day, the hardest seats,
sizzling late afternoon in June,
Mediterranean island, Kypru
for people named Athena or Theseus,
Cyprus for the rest of us.
Cicada whirr their immortal song
to salute another sunset,
cooling, bold light angling
westward as the horizon sweetens
into fruit salad colors
of honeydew, melon, and grape.
We sip Aphrodite’s white wine
and eat dinner picnics,
shifting from cheek to cheek
on Greek gritty stone benches
on crescent land descending
to the original cobalt sea,
on shaped amphitheater rows ascending
to sacred olive groves.
The clink of glasses, silverware rattle stills,
murmurs hush sun downwards,
expectation clenching
as gluteus muscles numb,
after all, the play’s the thing,
isn’t it?
Whether Sophocles then or Shakespeare
in the here and now,
the shortest night, the play must begin
in day’s closing,
backdrop twilighted west
to the unknown Gates of Herakles,
At Kourion, once again, Prologue enters:
it is a midsummer night’s dream.
Poetry in this post: © Victoria Crawford
Published with the permission of Victoria Crawford