heads of stone face the waves that rush / clapping against the body of the island shallow lip of white / against the rising of earth / flowering in sharp green trunks of life parabolic line of erosion / eruption etched into the rock / crags smoothed and jutting upright before the deep blue / warm under a thundercloud / full-sail drifting like a slow oncoming storm towards a nameless place, where people and gulls pass wondering, staring, waiting as the land fades into sea and the sea into sky / all-beginning forests drink up the alchemies of water and air / from the root of the wide Aegean shore
speaking of life in color / the palate of textures rough and dry under unforgiving sunlight falling over spectrums of earth where the blue sea becomes green shore / whitened crests lapping at the feet of dark brown stone / the few and far secluded beaches until the stone of the nude island mount is shown / white rising in points and crumbling the soil where trees grow softens under floorings / tufts of immaculate greenery low atop its height / cut against the lightest blue / wisps of off-white clouds beyond seen behind sail masts stretching out in the slight breeze / momentums to parallel coasts
waving from water to stone to air / eye level / the boat and a forest / above the sail toward the sky / the land moves up for a tree / seeds flown in by the migrating birds it descends with the erosion of roots / weather returning / from light to the deep from blue to blue / the earth around plunges like an island submerged by silence stilled to the following of the few who laugh and sing / read and see listening for the ways of the land between sea and sky / feeling for the depths and heights of blue, sea to sky / wandering without a hint of a map / not asking where or why lost between blues and floating over the sea, by air / and on through the moveable forests
Matt A Hanson is a poet from Massachusetts based in Istanbul. The first of his ten-poem series Blue Voyage appeared at dipity. This decad cycle is inspired by Azra Erhat, an early translator of classical Greek verse into modern Turkish. He archives his writings at FictiveMag.com