Amphora

OMENS

 

You said, write a poem about the sea,

of a lazy summer day and the sun.

Read clouds' shapes, their moving 

and changing colours.

The whale-like one seems ominous 

and it's so dark it makes me shiver.

Is it a portent of the doom to come?

And sea-gulls are disturbed

and louder than usual,

they must have sensed an omen,

but what?

The news said Saharan sand

rained in London,

and I dreamt of a drowned face. 

When I think better it was mine.

Please tell me it's all rubbish

and that the sea is our happy charm.

 

You hold my hand and it's getting cold,

somewhere between the whale-like cloud

and a drowned face, my reflection

froze in your frightened eyes.

 

 

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PRAYER

 

Forgotten by old gods

unknown to present-day ones

I pray to a new deity

to your wintry sea eyes.

 

Words are splashing water drops

a sermon to nothingness.

They profess the fear of eternity

and pray for the forgiveness

of sins done and those to come.

 

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THE REASON

 

When I dive into your hair

The scent of the sea takes me

To the days when the future

Was part of the present and

The past was sound asleep

In undersea graves of Ephesus.

My face, washed in salt,

Steals the life of olive trees

And I swim towards the shore

With the dead and depths calling me.

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Bio:

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Petar Penda is a professor of English and American literature and a translator. His translations are published in renowned journals in the USA and the UK. His poetry was published in "A Thin Slice of Anxiety", "Fevers of the Mind", "Lothlorien Poetry Journal", and "Trouvaille Review".