Monastery
We walk into a monastery chapel
carved high into mountain rock
in the midst of a third day mass for the dead,
tourists in the realm of God.
Gold enameled icons cling to the walls
above the few pews in its small dark space.
In 1827 monks held out here
against Ottoman occupiers
in caves formed in the side of the mountains,
religious tradition born of necessity.
Incense and words in an unfamiliar tongue
draw me back through remembrances of Latin mass
and chanted dies irae to the smaller, darker spaces
inaccessible to ordinary light.
The gift shop near the room where
the family of a dead son gathers
offers crosses, prayer books, icons, beads
and jar upon jar of dried herbs and flowers
gathered by the monks from slopes that surround,
petals of the past as brittle
as the remnants of faith forged in ancient hillsides.
Their scent lifts from the tea this morning,
curling upward as I breathe it in,
a hopeful acridity still seeking
those remoter silences.
At Akroteri Lighthouse
My daughter and I spider down the rocks
where wind-aged lava and the scent of the Aegean
bind us more strongly than any words possible.
Wedged in the boulders’ crevices I discover
a fragment of blue enameled pottery
perhaps a scrap of long ago Thera coughed up
reminding us that
then, as now (the surviving murals tell us)
young women bore hope in flowers
and fathers sacrificed to family gods
for their future.
But for all their prayers
the lava still came.
No bodies found.
Perhaps they escaped to these rocks
the westernmost part of the island
ships bearing them off.
It may even be that the destruction
was what they prayed for
the unchosen chance to leave behind
lives more fissured than the volcano.
We descend to the beach now
where the sea pounds these rocks down
into red and black sand
the way time pounds all dreams down
into the sediment of daily life,
fragments that only sparkle
when seen from a distance.
At a Café in Montreal
Trying to force her way among the café tables
the rotund tourist whacks a pitcher
with her bag
sending the water into my salad where it floats
like algae on a tidal reef
before pouring onto my pants.
Blessed with a warm autumn day in Montreal,
its hard not to laugh as the waitress races
to the table with towels.
We could be in Florida instead where a
hurricane has left thirty people dead
and no amount of towels will clean up the mess.
How have we come to the place
where the only time we help each other
is after the storm has hit
and the damage done?
This café isn’t large but
there is space at all the tables
if each customer is willing to
give up a little instead of
plunging ahead like a bullish traveler
eyes only on their own needs
Rally Grounds
Having just come up from Dacau
we stand on the podium where he spoke
promising to make Germany great again.
It is easy to imagine the crowds
rising in grainy footage to every harsh crescendo,
a fulminous sea at our feet.
Looking out over such enormous vacancy
silent and deserted now,
the stone bleachers behind us crumbling, grafittied
we’re tempted to think - Ozymandias.
But we’d be wrong.
Chestnuts are ripening, ready to drop
from the October trees beyond town’s edge.
And in the bayous of America, the men’s only bars,
the rusted foundries, the small evangelical churches,
the white-washed dreams of colonial daughters,
the corroded coughs of coal miners, the closeted confederate flags,
where fear, blame and self-protection seethe against change
a great beast swells towards rebirth.
Letter from Dubai
I sit in a mirage:
Tall buildings of glass and steel
rising out of a stony desert
inhabited only by ghosts of the future.
Sparrows prattle from the palms
and warm breezes full of the scent of sea
blown in by some jinn.
I must be in the California of my childhood,
the sky Disney blue.
The seed pods have been stripped from the acacia trees
only one still holds them – too high for me to reach.
Doves bobbing their speckled necks coo softly
something in Arabic I think
modulated in monosyllables like the call to prayer.
*****
Michael Northen was the facilitator of the Inglis House Poetry Workshop from 1997-2010 and the editor of Wordgathering from 2007-2019. He was also an editor of the anthology, Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability and the anthology of disability short fiction, The Right Way to Be Crippled and Naked (both from Cinco Puntos Press). He is currently working on an anthology of disability poetry to be published by Northwestern University Press in 2025.
