A child, my ship docked at the port of Athens.
I wasn’t a child who played in sand with a pail and shovel,
the ocean swimming nearby.
Greece taught me beauty without saying a word.
I swallowed the Acropolis, a kind of Eucharist.
It never passed through my intestines.
Even so, back in Queens, life was an apparatus
belonging to the city. Life cleared streets,
plowed snow, collected garbage,
was related to an ambulance, elevated trains.
It only made sense when I saw a field of wildflowers,
what some call the hand of God.
It took time before reality became
not a hope or wish, but what is—
my occasional Doric companion.