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.

• Peter Liptak
• Greece
• 1991
• poetry
• Poems