Poems

Her Shawl

Wearing an old flannel skirt

and wellingtons in her garden,

wisps of grey blown

across her smile, turning

to tell me the red lights

in my hair were my grandfather's,

weeding rows of lettuce,

broad beans, peas whose pods

she let us split there on the path

running a thumb along the green seal.

That's how I remember grandma.

Did she once wear this

pale triangle of silk, threads

knotting its edges, slipping through

my fingers, a shawl to warm

the elegance of evening shoulders

wrapping the night around her?

(from In Sight of the Sea)

Bosphorus

I watched from wide windows on the hill,

a child in Bebek. Cruise ships passed,

coal boats, the grey Soviet navy,

I didn't even know she'd been there too,

sailed from the Sea of Marmara

to the Black Sea

  ~~~

At night the air's so clear,

lights sparkle silver on each shore,

Europe and Anatolya. A ferry boat

bustles across the water, its wake

a widening V to lap the anchored liner,

Constantinople.

  Next day muezzins' calls

spiral the minarets. She steps

down into crowds, drowns in sound

in cobbled streets where men stoop,

stagger under baskets of firewood

and the yoghurt vendor's cry

echoes.

  In the bazaars

gold chains return the light

from other gold, stall to stall,

each red-patterned carpet flawed

with the one intricate human

mistake, and cumin, paprika, coriander

spill strange scents around her.

  ~~~

  when the seraglio

was still veiled and continents divided,

her photographs blurred reminders

of wood-carved balconies, palaces,

the Ottoman castle falling

to the water's edge.

(from In Sight of the Sea)