Lemnos

the deep male growl of the sea-lashed headland
—Sophocles, Philoctetes

August long ago, the summer Lemnian

(not like the deeds of those who killed their men),

the self a glowing bead, like Hephaestus falling

daylong out of heaven in the old story,

the island's interior a forge, a glory hole,

the odor of wild thyme borne offshore steadily,

the Aegean Sea purple, wine-dark, without epithet;

and as I walked on the beach, my mother not long dead,

the perfect crystal of my self-regard

so lately flawed, and landscape made to echo

my own low cry in the island's empty places,

I found a pure white bone that wind and salt

had scoured of every grief and all self-pity:

and so I came to the love of others.

Source: Poetry (March 2008)