Apropos of Calypso

Apropos of Calypso

Why linger here enamoured of the place?
This sea-girt isle, its skirt of rock and spume,
Its crumbling pumice cloaked in juniper,
Enthralls the sense, exudes a faint perfume
Of chard and parsley, violet and grape.
The tumbled stones heaped up beneath the cliffs
Converse in plangent clatter with the waves
And plunge and crack, revealing hieroglyphs,
Crustacean fossils, a titanic past.

The isle is full of figures that forecast
A destiny. The sun, so like a bright
Shuttle, plies an illuminated arc
Above the peak, emboldens this stylite
To point a shadowed finger out to sea.
Among the windward cypresses on shore
Clear, buoyant cries of terns and gulls confront
The twilight croaking of the crows, the roar
Of wind and surf, the evening's empty face.