Musings #33

FAMIY REUNION

– Kolimbithre Beach, Paros 2010

The Aegean blues and beckons.

My son is reading a Stegner novel off my home shelf,

his lover basks in the Greek sun, my husband dozes.

They are here with me in the place I have dreamed of

ever since I first read the glorified stories

of Alexander the Great – his life and conquests –

stories that blurred in a child’s eye

with those mother told of my dead father –

a hero in his own world and time, treating the wounded

in war and in the slums, speaking their language.

I decide to swim to the buoy. At first it seems not far,

though distance is inclined to unfurl. Destination

reached, slowly I make my way back – on a slant,

compensating for a strong, off-coursing current.

At least one blue eye has kept watch –

old enough to know how

life succumbs to sudden shifts, its wave-nature

– arch and spill, roll and frill,

and in-between, the lovely lulling interludes.

As I emerge, a casual Have a good swim?

Moments later, turning a page, he finds

a folded piece of paper, a prescription

written in 1995 for Roberta, my mother

– dead soon after –

who cared not a wit for travel, but would go anywhere

to be with us.