Olive Trees

Who has not wished, once,

Twice in a lifetime,

To float in yellow light and watch,

Amid the ratcheting cicadas,

The pomegranite tree in flame?

Or wished to spend a life

Beneath the morning glory

On the brown-tiled roof

Of a villa nesting

By a limpid bay?

You'd walk past olive trees on holy days

Amongst the quayside restaurants

And ouzo warehouses,

Stand and chat to fishermen

Beside a cage-filled boat.

At night they might invite you

To lower a cage or two,

Watch them swinging in dark water,

Beneath those stern lamps,

Large as street lights.

Or beneath the olive trees you might

See images of years ago,

Children stretching haunting,

Timid, ulcerated hands

To indifferent passers by.

For you must know the island's

Westward face - petrified stumps

Of trees on tumbled slopes,

Ancient trunks of rock

Incised across and down.

And when you eat your melon

Under trellises of vines,

As dragonflies flit orange

And red past marble sea,

With Asia, floating,

Turn towards the tanneries,

Fish restaurants, refineries

Of olives, which a worried Greek,

Caged here in wartime saw,

And as a myriad ruby bugs

Crawled over him said:

I am always thinking to myself

If I am not shot ... what

A fine place this is for business.

Then when you see the fishing boats

At dawn engrave dark scrolls

On silver water, reflect again

Why the green straits, the pure

Water, the swimming and the living,

Have so much to recommend them.

The olive trees are richer here,

The guide book says,

Richer than elsewhere.

©Terry Hodgson2026