AN ERA NOT OF MY CHOOSING
It's difficult to find good air here.
I spy great sloping emerald hills that slide to the lapping sapphire Mediterranean, a mosaic of shattered and staggering surging glass. I see that, and the olives everywhere, bountiful, ripe, fat, glistening in a sonorous sun. Figs, too, portly dots in black and purple, trees stuffed with them sagging, and grapes, vines winding, cobblestones through time.
The sheep loll and eat, and I graze on them.
Easy eyes, only.
And the peonies sigh.
I smell honey. Nectar. And wine. Cups of it. Earthenware jugs of it. Casks of it. Wine pelts my saluting face, plum red, plentiful, a bit of the skin left from the pressing. Clouds pass empty, having enriched the soil and me, soaked, and the love runs to the shore, the sand, my steps, and I am a colossus. On guard and welcoming.
Rough laundry bakes dry on clay walls.
Well water is cool to my lips, and I sip.
An oak bucket, its perfume of the forest, is eternal.
I hear the laughter of children—they kick up dust with the chickens and chase orange-spotted butterflies, a million zigging and zagging fanciful rainbows afloat. Of course, they never catch either, but they are mere children, idyllic, and I envy their persistent failure.
Two peacocks loudly contest the beauty of the sea.
Gaze at us, and I do as I am told, a shepherd to his purpose.
From the door of a rough-hewn shelter, a mother calls her children home.
Can you hold your breath?
Why she asks.
Because I am trapped, my lungs filled with plastic in an era not of my choosing. I am modern and hollow, wanting, and waning. I need you to fill me with your sumptuous journey. I am waiting, my mouth open wide, for you to exhale into me. Can you do that?
I can do that, she promises.
Hurry, please, dawn is knocking at my window.