I CHAMENI STIGMI
(THE LOST MOMENT)

the mountain
places a cloud
behind its head

dozes off
into the blue
of an afternoon

the father's shadow
watches his child
pedal a trike

chasing a chicken
in circles
laughing hysterically

this a moment
that will vanish
into a Greek sky

that only
a passing poet
will notice enough

in his head where
words will
re-enact it endlessly

even as time
fades and
years vanish

and the French lady
states that reality is
'les mensonges et les larmes'.

*

Finally got around to these fragments that came together in a moment after 40 years! But as the Greeks would have it. . . "Αγάλι-αγάλι γίνεται η αγουρίδα μέλι."

"Agáli-agáli yínete i agourída méli"

“The unripe grape becomes sweet like honey slowly-slowly.”

Today I took
The long way home
Added a few extra miles
To my beat up VW while
Listening to some oldies
And watching the sun rays
Gently finding their way
Through the trees before
Fading in the horizon

Today I took
The time to see past the
Darkness I was plunged in
To appreciate there's beauty
In the perpetual changes of life
For most things might never
Be as they once were
But what matters
Will remain...

In the chill of the mist
we walk on the almost deserted way.

I have little to say
being filled with her beside me
and she breathes the wind in
as our lonely world spins.

Sometimes we touch as we walk
prompting her to look at me
with a veiled smile across her face
when the walk seems sweeter than happiness.

The date trees are brimming with juice, she says
the pots will be filled in no time, I affirm,
some farther and we will be there.

Something akin to love
brews with the nectar.

The swings hum softly in the wind,
clouds drift like slow balloons,
and the rivers race each other,
laughing all the way to the sea.

Mountains wear their crowns of snow,
trees play tag with the breeze,
while the stars peek through at night,
waiting for the sun to hide and seek.

But we, so busy building walls,
forget the feel of grass beneath our feet.
We hold the sky in photographs,
too scared to reach out and let it hold us back.

The rain is just a skipping stone,
tossed from some far-off, gentle hand.
The world spins like a merry-go-round,
yet we clutch the rails, afraid to let go.

Look closer, can you see it now?
The colors, bright as chalk on pavement.
The echoes of laughter in the hills,
the quiet voice that calls your name.

This world is a playground, waiting still.
Not a prison of glass and steel.
Jump higher, run farther—fall if you must.
The hands that shaped the stars
will catch you in the dust.

Song Tears for fears, Everybody Wants to Rule the World.

It’s hard to meet someone serious at college. Everyone’s busy,
self-centeredly grinding away at their dreams. So much so that
people tell you to not even try (especially as a freshman).

I was mostly at ease with myself—as a freshman. I had an
excellent skincare routine—it was downright luxuriant, and it
kept me going, through that romantically baren and lonely year.

But we humans hope—we buy lotto tickets to dream on—though we know the awful math. We Gen Z’s seem to have our own unique brand of loneliness, born of covid and Internet-age experience.

My romantic expectations, sophomore year, were low—ok, unmeasurable.

Looking around was depressing. There were socially awkward STEM majors, jocks, frat men (sure the world’s laid-out just for them) and ‘CSOM Bros" (business majors more interested in parlaying my Grandmère’s money than me) and the elusive, emotionally reserved, ‘regular guys.’

But the unexpected can happen. We all know how crowded campus coffee shops are—the students move in and out in tides as noisy as the real, salty ocean. And then there you were, a rumpled, 25-year-old doctoral student—from another world—asking to share my table.

The loudest thing in that room was your sense of stillness. You seemed to be a new and distinct species, and as we talked, you seemed to somehow smooth my anxious edges. After a few meets, the thought, ‘I really like this guy,’ seemed to have its own gravity.

We somehow managed to thread the ‘too busy to care’ dynamic, and as time went by, you helped me channel my absurd, fiery, pastel-painted, first-love, early-twenty girlhood heat into something longer lasting, deep and authentic. Congratulations! It’s been two years.

Separating now, would be like removing the salt from the sea.
.
.
Songs for this:
Playing House by Kudu
So Much Mine by The Story
After Last Night by The Revlons