Traveling to Europe

 

I get off a plane in Reykjavik, Iceland.

The stop between Greenland and Europe

is brief, time for refueling the jet

& my empty stomach.

 

I almost ignore the cluck, cluck,

clucking beckon to my right; yet,

I look & a woman, an eyecatcher, gets up

& motions wildly with her empty hand.

 

“Welcome to my island home,” she speaks

English fluently. “May I trouble you?”

I approach her, saying, “I don’t smoke.”

She answers, “Neither do I.”

 

She asks me my name, sits & I

sit beside her, take the Coke

she offers then tell her who

I am, both names. She seeks

 

my eyes says, “I am Hecate

& I am Bi-Sexual. Drink, drink,

I am a bartender. I am disease free

at the moment. I like the moon,

 

Hecate, & how do you feel that I swoon

at sight of you?” Her gaze holds me

prisoner. I do not take time to think,

& answer, “your eyes are temperate…”

 

She laughs. “I look at the moon constantly

in winter, the only time we can see her

here.” She calls me by my last name,

“Tomas"; says, “Tomas is Reykjavik’s poet.”

 

“No place claims me as its poet,”

I tell her” & she says, “if it’s all the same

with you, I will claim you as my author,

but first you must write words for me.”

 

She hands me a book, its Icelandic title

meaning nothing to me, but I open it.

I see its words have the form of poetry tho

its sounds lie silent on the page.

 

Dylan Thomas’ words, however, upstage

my thought & at the moment all I know

to write is a parody that seems to fit

of In my Craft or Sullen Art. Subtle,

 

I write on the title page:

On this spendrift page,

not for a shy woman apart

from the absent moon I write

words for lovers, their arms

round their heated bodies,

making love, their craft, their art.

 

She reads, “If you have time,”

she smiles, “I will take you home with me.”

A tear flows down her cheek

when I tell her, “My flight.”

 

I go not gentle from her sight.





Rudy Thomas 

http://authortree.com/mtpoet/Home

 
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