for Dimitris and i.m. Tony

It's still there, your island – solid, brittle

in the hazy antique blue – as you speed in

by hydrofoil to attend a brother's funeral;

and surely the bay is welcoming, is home,

place validating your every word

and long ago conscripting you. That bay

I like to imagine Artemis landed in,

foaming ashore in all her argent finery. There,

last year, stripping under feathery tamarisks,

daily we swam among quicksilver, nipping fish,

and later, unable to take my eyes off it

(the easy progress of the moon), we talked

on the balcony, gorged on melon, while Tony,

shuffling below, set places for supper

beneath translucent vines

and there was jasmine, oleander everywhere.

But he's no longer at ground level

marinating fish, fetching wine, shoo-ing feral cats

back into the dusky olive trees. His two-stroke

no longer chugs him down to market to fetch cheese.

Now you, Dimitris, will be struggling with

the commonplace meanings of the island, the way

everything still goes about its business, the moon

rising above the bay, above the floodlit castle,

as if this were the way of things – which of course it is.