Shoulder to shoulder 
a crowd jostles to watch 
the Fira sunset swaddle town, bay, rock 
in swells of pink and talcum blue. 
 
I retreat into a church. A matronly woman 
bends at the waist to kiss glass
that holds a gilded icon.
Her withered mother does the same.
The next day at dawn 
on the black beach
Renee and I are alone 
as wind in from Cypress 
draws a single cloud 
into the shape of a harp.
 
The sun is a host, crimson,
crimson rides the crests of waves. 
 
On the street behind us, 
a restaurant cracks its shutters. 
An old man with cuffs 
rolled up over thick socks
 
sweeps the walk. Cigarette dangled
off lips, he mutters back at the door
where a woman stands – 
black skirt, black sweater.
                        

You can’t breathe and get by any oncoming vehicle 
and hold the road all at the same instant for all
the treachery of goat paths turned into roads near Frati.
 
Beside bramble, wattle and daub, 
sheep and cattle huddle. 
Vistas galore as lightning 
licks chasms and crests 
that were the first go of Crete
in the range where Zeus was cradled.
 
Within its zigzag maze, ancient Spilli
holds a score of open shop doors 
and one church whose icons blaze gold. 
At the city’s marbled plaza 
a spring spouts out of the mouths 
of twenty-five lions sculpted 
back when the Minoan of Knossos 
ruled this end of the Mediterranean.
Twice locals come up, bend forward, 
fill milk jugs to the brim.
 
We drive on into even more jagged stuff. 
Stop at a well-lit bar in a village suspended 
on a cliff’s edge. Wizened and draped in black
a grandmother fixes sharp eyes on us. Men
in blue jeans or suit coats smoke, chat. 
Lightning blows the sky apart.