landscape with father
Sprawled flat on your back
you’ve become the hills, the banks
of scrub and stubbly brown
here, the wind-smoothed cracks
in your forehead of greyish stone.
On your cheek an ochre village.
In your palm an olive grove
grows over your fingers.
Now the season is hot
above your feet. The fleecy
clouds will soon be cooling
the evening. Sleepily cooing
doves make their cot
in the eaves of your hair.
When the rains come this winter, your eye
slowly opens: a clear
pool in summer’s dry
bowl. Children lean
over your lids and peer
playfully inside.
What an amazed landscape. Not
even you, I bet, could have thought
that you would be so quiet.