Skyros Rising
Elephant grey, elephant-wrinkled pink
Thrown out of cobalt blue.
Spectacular stone bookshelves at mad angles
Forever sliding into turquoise surf.
Above, hard dry breasts of hills
Nurse forests of conifer and olive,
While cavernous vaults below
Hide a myriad of eyeless lives.
All along, stories of ancient settled graves
And clashing continents are told and retold
As layer and layer and rank upon rank
They rise, for this day, out of the sea.
Bev Cross