for the Samaritans of Skala Sikaminias

ROOSTERS CROW

                                       for the rescuers

A gray light shines through the normal world

a silver-scale dawnlight

like the sea-sound in the right

chord on an oud, like a sail unfurled

on a cedar mast, standing simply free

on a fishing boat, out of Skala

Sikaminias, on Lesbos.  Ah,

sighs the wind, for the drowned refugee –

Oh, keens the seaman, for the ghost

of his son (a scarecrow

helped to shore).  Hard row

now, for Samaritans – for the host

village, gasping by the sea, in the normal

world, in the feathered light

of the mourning dove, so quiet

here (in the soughing wind, in the tall

cedars, in the shy bird’s nest, in the forest

dusk, in the soft

dawnlight, in the gray gull’s loft,

in the normal world).  Plain salt is best.

On a concrete floor, someone traced a star

like an octagon, in a Sapphic

ode – under harsh traffic,

under raving codes, like a graven bar

on a looping ply.  In a rosy key

sailors skim toward home –

from a morning comb,

roosters crow for Lesbos (merrily).

8.18.16

*for more information on sources of this poem, see today's New York Times article