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Blue Voyage III

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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