On the Isle of Corfu

Above high cliffs,
peregrines carve the air like signatures.
The almond trees, the walnuts –
they do not ask for permission.
They offer oxygen, salt-laced, ocean-borne,
a sharpness that rinses the lungs clean.

Water remembers.
It erupts from red rock, from gray seams –
no signage, no ceremony. Just sip.

Myrtle runs riot,
snow-spider blossoms clinging to the stems.
Strawberries spill from the bush,
and the butterflies –
two-tailed, imperia –
stage their quiet coup.

The olive tree presides.
Five hundred years of crooked wisdom.
Bent like arthritic knuckles gripping the soil.
It is not beautiful. It is sovereign.

Sand dunes -my sanctuary.
Salt marsh to the left,
Mediterranean to the right.

I walk the corridor between bamboo
and wave froth.
A minor event, as healing often is
when it happens to someone else.