By Thomas Zimmerman

Greece: morning light bled rose, then bronze, then gold
on Mount Parnassos. I was thinking of
the grassy knolls an ocean west that hold
my parents’ graves, of all the dead I love.
Tragedian and archaeologist:
my Attic mode. I plumbed the dank and dark,
recorded music antic in the mist
of dream. I burned strange herbs at Delphi, spark
of perfumed prophecy. Olympia
reigned plain and fallen. Epidaurus, scoured
Mycenae powdered my ephemera
with dust of kings. Thoughts drifted, lotus-flowered,
from Alfa beer to Agamemnon’s mask,
from ghosts to questions they and I would ask.