Jim Burns
The Change
The poet arrives.
He has changed since
I last saw him,
and is now successful
and no longer writes
about hills and walls
and old men. Instead,
the bright poems are
full of references
to Greece and the
blue sky and the sea
with the sun on it.
His friend smiles
as he jibes at
tourists licking
ice-cream cones on
the Parthenon, and
then she smooths
her long hair over
her denimed shoulders,
and crosses her legs.
The poet carries on,
the Mediterranean
ebbs and flows,
but I can’t help
thinking of a slate-
grey sky and a stone
wall across a hillside,
and an old man
leaning on it.
Page(s) 64
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