Five Things I Will Do in Aegina
1)
I will drink white Greek barrel wine
upon arrival at my sister’s villa.
I’ve only waited 39 years to be here.
I’ve only been on the road for 20 hours
so please, bring me a tall, cold glass.
2)
Father Zeus, give me sleep
on crisp white linen sheets
while I hear the exact crash of
waves the ancient poets heard.
May I replicate their sacred words.
3)
Moni Island Beach.
It is November, but I have a wetsuit.
If I have traveled 4,970 miles
I will sink, then rise
from the blue Aegean,
a curious New England mermaid
pale and reborn
on this nostos, my awakening.
4)
It is harvest season in Rachel’s groves.
I pick the olives, tenderly
pinching each plump green blossom,
placing them into my basket
like a mother
gathering verdant children, one by one,
curling each precious flower to my breasts.
5)
And what mysteries await
at the Temple of Aphaia?
The Doric columns are solid, serene,
unchanged after centuries
under this impossibly cerulean sky.
Whose ancient ashes curl
between my toes when I remove
my worn American sandals?
The soles of poets, harlots,
priests, and traitors--
all dust.
Goddesses, I demand your secrets.
The whispers of Calliope and Polyhymnia,
their sweet words in crescendo
singing over the sea--
Susan, our Susan, you are our Eurydice, saved.
About the Author: Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New York Quarterly, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press) and Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press).
Image Credit: Keystone View Company, publisher “Temple of Aphaea from the west, Aegina, Greece” Public domain image courtesy of The Library of Congress
As It Ought To Be 