Rhodes & a poem
St Michael (Asklipios)
Turkish cemetery
Symi
TAR, RHODES
We went for a final swim
in front of the Belvedere Hotel.
The cleanest beach in all Rhodes,
you called it.
I had my doubts, preferring
Gennadi, even Faliraki.
The wind was up,
the waves like the first day.
You swam first
while Gabriel lugged me
about in the frothy water,
searching for stones.
The eyes of Swedish girls
gazed at us over the sunlounger heads
like those of basking crocodiles.
They swam too,
clenching their buttocks
in the coldness of the water,
their breasts for the photo.
When my turn came,
I swam as if for the last time,
making a mental note to thank God,
if not Rhodes,
for natural beauty,
light on stone,
bells tolling out a welcome
for each new
boat to berth.
Cypress-like silhouettes lined the beach.
I ignored them now, concentrating instead on
a schooner skirting the horizon,
so faint and out of place
on a sea lane dominated by metal containers
I thought it was ‘just a dream,’
when something landed on my big toe.
Fearing it was the creature
I had always imagined when afloat,
I lifted my foot out of the water.
A black stain covered my toe,
when I reached out and took a swipe at it,
it refused to budge,
clung there tenaciously,
probably extracting my blood.
It was sticky and strangely
two-dimensional.
I tried to carry on swimming,
pretend it wasn’t there,
but when I made it back to the beach,
it had spread,
corrupted my heels and soles.
In the end, Iannis lent us some White Spirit
to wash the pestilence off
our feet and one-year-old’s legs.
A parting gift, for which
I cursed Rhodes, the sea, the unseen
mortgagers of our souls.
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