Sunday is now my day for posting one of my poems. As I said last week, I might not feel the same about some of my poems as I did when I wrote them, but they’re part of my writing history.

Here’s this week’s offering - a poem from 2002: (I’ll explain below a little about what inspired it, and what I think about it now.)

AT ATHENS AIRPORT

White has a different meaning
underground. More so in that hollow time
before thin hours swell to daybreak.
If this mile-long corridor held stores of words
blank walls would be awash with abstracts -
detachment, dislocation, distance.
Single travellers seem to cast no shadow -
landing, they’ll brace themselves,
not against the jolt of wheels on tarmac,
but the delicate reintegration of self to self.
******
A wall of plate-glass holds the heat at bay.
Light waves stream through, skid to a halt
on marble tiles. The floor’s a lake, the way
it draws down smudged blue lines from strip-lights
and dark Aegean blue of check-in counters,
sky-blue monitors floating below them.

I’m trying to label blue I’ve left behind.
Shutters opening on white walls are easy
but sea defeats me – flash of kingfisher,
a peacock’s eye, can’t catch that shade between
taste of spearmint and smell of eucalyptus.
Blue fades so fast. How will I keep it?
******
Voices. Man and wife, an awkward wall
around their son. Squat wheels skew out
under luggage. In the marble lake
a creature stirs. The boy treads ice,
hand on his father’s arm until bare calves
make contact with my bench.
Eyeballs swivel like a startled horse.
See nothing. The mother’s words
like fingers on his face, We won’t be long.
You sure you’ll be all right?

Does he know there’s someone beside him?
He’s fumbling a remembered blanket
rocking his body like a metronome. My hands
lie clammy on my lap, veins like blue worms.
The usual offering won’t help me now, the smile,
the nod, that gives me haven in eyes of strangers.

Blue’s just a name for certain waves of light.

*********************************

It’s a strange experience to re-read some of my own poems that were written several years ago. A bit like suddenly coming across a photo of my younger self, and realising that I’ve moved on since then - that not only do I look different, but that I think about, and understand, the world from a different vantage point.

Reading this poem again just now, has reminded me more about the struggle that I had when writing it, than the thoughts and emotions that inspired it, and that I was attempting to convey.

And now I can see that that’s what’s wrong with it! The effort is too apparent - I was trying too hard to pin down with absolute precision my feelings about everything I was experiencing - every sight and sound had to be described in detail, and this, I now realise, has dissipated the emotion in too much ‘thinking’, too many words.

I’m still pleased with several parts of each section, but that’s not enough – by focussing too much on individual ‘trees’ I’ve (at least partly) lost sight of the wood in its entirety.

I’m somtimes asked if I find it difficult to switch from writing a novel to writing poetry, and although at the time I wasn’t aware of it, it could be that I was in ‘novel-writing’ mode when I wrote this poem.

(It wouldn’t be surprising, because I was also spending a lot of my time on The Dangerous Sports Euthanasia Society)

I don’t really need to give any more background to the poem itself, apart from saying that it came from my experience of spending the night at Athens Airport. I was on my way back from another wonderful writing course at Kithera, in June 2002, this time led by Crysse Morrison – an inspiring tutor, poet, performer and author of two enthralling novels.