It's Still Life

A Stillness

I’ve entered a thousand doors, watched
the sun move through me like a thought.
I’ve walked straight as a road to the sky.

Hellenic ancestors hear our nail and claw.
Clicking. And they know we are still alive
in some distant fateful field of stars.

Morning arrives inside me. A stillness.
Like a church bell possesses after ringing
and begins to long for its clapper’s stroke.

This is The Tomb of Unknown Soldier,
my own walled garden with two Evzones.
Stoic. Still. We are long as patience.

Dawn breaks across the marbles, white
as a blank page, and I turn my gaze
inward on the click of 60 nail shoes.

Today is Greek Independence Independence Day, and this poem and accompanying photograph, which was taken by Spira, commemorate the start of the War of Greek Independence in 1821. ©Spira and Misky 2024.