Europa

     
You can take a piece
of my heart out
and bury it, in the African market
beneath the Eiffel Tower,
that had me,
at twelve years old,
tell the bells of Sacre Coeur
they toll for my stories
of summers
among wilderness ruins and stones and
silence me,
make me alone, with the sounds
of sea sloshing against
harbour walls,
minute fish in swathing shoals,
and the hiss of tanks carrying the calls
of strange birds
in olive trees,
the scent of dew-kissed hills,
wet sand,
whirring pedals on a midnight's breeze,
...my love,
and the moon
on a stick...
make me weak
at my knees and
ecstasy-sick with paella, gelato, and crepes,
soft glasses of sun-blessed
grapes under
barrel-vaulted & woven-vine bars,
foot-prints through my soul made under
endless, diamond stars, that weep
from a depth
of blue-black,
rushing kilometres of click-clack, the screech
of wheels-down on hot tarmac and
the hugs of 'coming home' -
not ground and borders,
but eyes and arms,
- mine, mine...whole, calm...
Go ahead. Take a piece of my heart,
bury it, when the snow falls
and the Glühwein flows,
...with eirini on my shoulders, it alone,
chooses the hand it holds...
and I need no permission
to love.