The black sands of Perissa
spoke today
as my feet slowly sank
in the sand,
each receding wave
sliding back under the next.
A rainbow of black appears
through the laughing blue Aegean surf
and erases the footprints
to where I stand
as it erased ten thousand
before.

There are colors here. . .
dusty, olive green trees
line the beach
and speckle the tan mountainsides
that rim Thira,
that ancient volcano.
The houses – white and blue trimmed
form a negative
of the vast blue sky
touched with a soft brush of billowing white
and the big blue
speckled and fanned with crests of white foam.

But the blood red of Homers sky
and the rainbow black sand–
black like death–
shook, with clenched fists,
this antique world,
buried the prosperous Minoans
and created the myth
of Atlantis.

• 1991
• Greece
• Peter Liptak
• Poems
• poetry